


Thirty Six

by Cyrelia_J



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Asexual Character, Autism, Character Study, Drama, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Genetically Engineered Beings, Jack's disjointed thoughts, M/M, Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-16 19:33:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 39
Words: 32,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16960191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyrelia_J/pseuds/Cyrelia_J
Summary: "From childhood’s hour I have not beenAs others were—I have not seenAs others saw—"For Jack, the thought of being alone has always been far worse than the thought of a life imprisoned, and above all, he's spent a lifetime desperate for someone to understand him. When Sarina leaves, he doesn't know what to do, until she gives him an idea: stay on Deep Space Nine with one Doctor Julian Bashir, the man who has everything that Jack has ever wanted.Of course, why didn't he think of that?Bashir looks up as Jack expected quick, the expression on his face changing with every word just like Jack had imagined after he, himself had read it. Bashir blinks at him dumbly, conflicted, those words echoing back “I know you feel guilty for what happened and I forgive you but if you still don’t feel that enough, would you please help Jack?...” She said Bashir was lonely, needy, desperate, and Jack thinks that he’s like Baudelaire’s king of a rain-country for whom nothing will ever satisfy but… he is the king that Jack must swear fealty to and so he smiles.





	1. Letters

**Author's Note:**

> So I have wanted forever to write a good long drama what if of Jack staying behind on Deep Space Nine and it came about as part of the 30 day drabble challenge. It expanded quite a bit though most chapters are still drabble length, and is chock full of feels but i love it. I wanted to pour every bit of my love for Jack into this one and here it is. This is a Tumblr migration so it should all be up in a few days with some minor edits
> 
> I'll also add if this doesn't make a Jack/Julian convert out of you, then nothing will ;)
> 
> Lastly, in all of my works, I do write Jack somewhere on the ace spectrum and though I tend to refrain from explicitly stating it I headcanon him as being an autistic child who was never "fixed" the way that Julian was - though I maintain there's nothing that needed fixing. That being said, Jack here is only meant to be representative of Jack and not any group as a whole as everyone's journey is different and unique. I think Jack is one of the more misunderstood and underappreciated characters and I think the writers missed a lot of potential with him, so here's my fix on that for your reading enjoyment.
> 
> C&C is totally welcome, and thank you to anyone who gives my boy a chance!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Deep Space Nine, a brief moment of Jack's relationship with Sarina

Jack sets the PADD down, nibbling on his finger thoughtfully. It’s Frege, the pertinent sections highlighted to catch his eyes. He still reads the entire work,  _ twice,  _ before picking up the second PADD; T’Prell’s treatise on what humans would term “informal logic”.

“You don’t agree with me,” he says definitively after setting the PADD down. “You disagreed from the start.” He frowns. Sarina looks straight ahead, but he can see the path of her eyes. “You let me go on for an hour hm. An entire hour sitting there thinking that it was flawed, without holding your hand up hmhm.” He scowls. “You thought that was funny, didn’t you? So funny. Bet you and Lauren had a good laugh at that one,” Jack grumbles, pulling his legs up to his chest on the table.

 

Sarina raises an arm slowly, pointing at the second PADD, holding it there until he picks it back up and starts scrolling down. Jack’s eyes catch the “:-)” at the end and he huffs. Alright, she got him. He opens his mouth to grumble that if she thinks she’s so clever then she can pick their next debate topic, when her finger carefully presses one of the programmed highlight buttons. A scattering of letters is suddenly highlighted. Jack scans them quickly, realizing they don’t form a meaningful message. So either they’re scrambled or encoded. He’s about to ask her  _ which _ before deciding that’s part of the game.

 

It takes him an hour. By then, he realizes she’s already gone. That’s for the best, he thinks, because he nearly drops the PADD when he deciphers it. Jack clears his throat. He’s not sure how to… how to process… Well… that… that makes sense if one… if one enjoys a certain sound then it would just stand to reason that… that… Jack stands up, absently brushing off his pants, chewing the tip of his finger a little harder than before. He could ask Lauren but… but she’d tease him and this is  _ Serious  _ so… so he decides to think about it a little longer, only looking up from his pacing when Patrick pokes his head in the library, and lets him know excitedly that today is homemade ice cream.

  
Well, one can hardly say “no” to ice cream, especially if they made his with cinnamon like the last time. He owes Lauren for that one. Jack nods three times exactly, and sets the PADD down before thinking better of just leaving it exposed, quickly coding a passkey onto it. He smiles just one more time at the words.  _ “I like the sound of your voice,”  _ are the decoded letters displayed (it was a cypher, after all!), and he resolves to include a message back the next time they’re debating Vulcan philosophy. He’ll think about what he wants to say in return, an extra hop here, the lights shutting off as he goes. Jack wonders what Sarina’s voice would sound like if he could hear it in return.


	2. Order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before leaving for DS9, another routine meeting with Dr. Loews

“What’s your name?” That’s the question that Nurse Ratched always asks when they begin. Jack has never once answered it Wrong. Of all the things they’ve stolen away, they can’t take his memories. They’ve tried to convince him he’s crazy, that he’s dangerous, a murderer, a _monster_ and he’s afraid one day he may start believing them- but not today.

 

“My name is Jonathan J. Merriweather.” He says carefully, clearly enunciating every bit of it because for all the tics in his speech, he’s never not been able to say his own name. Jack looks at her steady, a dead calm sea, the only ripple below the surface his leg bouncing. He sits back in the chair, not leaning forward, Power Position! He never bites his fingers in these meetings. Instead he grips the arms of the chair as if he’s been strapped in for an electrocution. He takes another slow deep breath, ignoring the pain of his lungs telling him there’s not enough space.

 

Sometimes she ends the session then. Sometimes she asks him questions, phrased differently every time. He never answers Wrong! Sometimes she shows him pictures of that _thing_ that stole his identity to “remind him” that his life wasn’t real. Sometimes he can hold his temper but...but today she _presses_ him. Today she tells him not to lie and... the room is too cold and the hum of the lamp on her desk makes it hard to keep that _calm_ , when she repeats the question and he repeats the answer and _I must not tell lies_ rings louder and louder in his head- the shadows of the old owl block the light from the room and he’s standing and shouting that he doesn’t lie and he isn’t crazy and he wants his Attorney.

 

That’s when the hypospray comes out. Her expression never changes when she stands from the other side of the desk and advances on him, a click of her tongue, a count in her mind of another Failure, of more _defiant_ behavior. That’s when he recites. That’s when, with steady voice, and steady eyes, Jack does nothing but recite it.

 

_“Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole…”_

 

Her hands are cold and unpleasant and he backs away from them more than anyone else, locking his hands together when she approaches so he doesn’t accidentally touch her. He only backs against the wall continuing _“I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.”_ He doesn’t crack- she is a demon who feeds on fear and only grows stronger if he shows weakness. _“In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud.”_ There’s always an unpleasant skin crawl before the sedative takes effect. _“Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.”_ Then she tells him, through that haze, that next week she’s going to try a different tact.

 

Next week they’re going to meet a man called Bashir.


	3. Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arriving on Deep Space Nine, a moment amongst the Jack Pack

“You’re really going to leave the lights on the entire time?”

“Did I stutter?” Jack snaps, shutting his eyes already. He starts the clock in his head counting down, taking a moment to design the timer, deciding it should be metal burnished, gleaming brightly so that every time he pulls that timer up and sands fall from the reflective hourglass they nearly blind him.

“I thoughts lights gave you headaches,” Patrick adds, Jack sucking in a long breath in response because  _ of course _ the lights hurt his head and they’re not going to stop hurting his head just because Patrick points it out! 

 

Jack waves him off- Lauren he can be Loud with, Patrick he can’t - he can’t be quiet right now if he talks. He sits back on the ground, forehead to his knees, steady,  _ breathing _ , because he needs to… make this work in his head so he can try and tolerate it.

“You really think this is going to prove anything to them?” Lauren asks, the furniture shifting with her weight behind him. 

“Well what else is there hm?” he mumbles into his knees, that  _ humming _ invading his head after the lights have stopped.

 

He isn’t getting any closer to Normal. Nurse Ratched made sure to point that out during another assessment. He wasn’t improving. He wasn’t  _ trying _ . Did he want to be locked up forever? The same conversation over and over and wasn’t that the very definition of insanity. What was the Point of trying when he couldn’t make the buzzing stop? When he couldn’t make his head stop swimming, when he would  _ hear _ everyone and everything, when his heart would just start racing, and that horrible unending fear would grip him and-

 

“They’re not going to let us out. We may as well leave the lights off and enjoy it while we’re here.” Lauren is trying. Lauren is always  _ trying _ because Lauren has a family and parents who visit on her birthday and send presents and she has a place to go. Jack grits his teeth, ignoring her and Patrick talking the imagined adventures they’re going to have while they’re there because they’re both  _ delusional _ and don’t seem to care that they’ve been stuck in a cargo bay like  _ animals. _

“Enjoy it hm?” He almost points out that Bashir doesn’t know her, doesn’t care, that it’s not real. But Jack knows those particular Dreams can’t change and that she’s always going to see those things through the Wrong lens. “Right… enjoy it,” he mumbles into his knees.

 

Jack sighs as Sarina sits down next to him. Sarina is always warm- the only warm thing that he has. He feels her hand going over his and he moves his face from his knees to her shoulder. 

“Just… just leave them on,” he says trying to find that mythical gray space of Calm. Nurse Ratched swears he should be able to see it. He finds it, Sarina lightly resting her head on his.

  
But it’s not in him 


	4. Rule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events of Statistical Probabilities, a brief meeting with Garak in his shop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew Robinson writes in ASIT on a brief meeting of Jack in Garak's shop and that intrigued me :)

Jack takes a deep breath as he stands outside the shop. It’s just opened and by his calculations, by his review of the security feeds it should be the most tranquil hour and he made it here on his own without encountering another soul. Good, that’s Good, because curiosity is warring with his anxiety and he keeps telling himself that every count of his steps is a tether anchoring him back to the cargo bay, a snap back should the oxygen run out on the line and any moment they’ll pull him back if he starts to drown. 

 

Lauren promised if he wasn’t back by 1100 that she would come get him. 

 

So he breathes out, in, steady, because this is Important. This is the dream which must be held fast, no barren fields, no broken wing birds though his wings have been severed for nearly two decades now, the morbid counter of the sparrow hobbling crippled through the deep snow, each of its tracks a counter of hours as it moves pitifully along. And Bashir said it definitively that what they did was Treason, was Wrong even as hours earlier it was Right and he stood there smug, sanctimonious, rubbing Jack’s face in failure, in the gift of freedom snatched back from his grasping fingertips and those cool deceptive tones, those dark eyes looking- well… that didn’t matter.

 

Jack knew it was all a lie when they brought them here. 

 

There’s no freedom to be found in The Federation if there ever was for anyone and especially not for him. Cardassia is under the Dominion’s rule but supposing that he’s gone about approaching the problem from the Wrong direction then it isn’t the Federation who needs his help but perhaps the Cardassians to shake of the yoke of conquest.

 

Perhaps he could even live there should the war end.

 

Jack had read everything that he could find which was precious little and found those resources lacking. Which led to only one non Treasonous source on station for information where he was currently headed now, hovering nervously in the doorway. Cardassian hearing is poor, he knows that much so he walks softly, arms folded, careful to avoid anyone staring, looking, Smiling back because that’s what you’re supposed to do but he feels more nauseous as many years as it’s been. But it’s empty and he sees the Cardassian name Elim Garak possibly an alias occupation tailor possible spy possible assassin standing there watching him with a smile back.

 

He doesn’t particularly like that smile.

 

There’s something unsettling about the eyes that set on him and staring is  _ not _ appropriate, but he stares back remember greeting, hello, not sure if he spoke in English or the Kardasi he was teaching himself until a double blink alerts him to the fact that he did use the New language and almost wishes he hadn’t but… but there’s no going back now and as the man Garak asks him if he requires assistance Jack is tempted to ask him which road to take right out but if Alice doesn’t know then it doesn’t matter then the answer doesn’t matter and he… he decides that he needs a better way to approach the Question.

 

The Federation is always Listening.

 

Right then… this was a Bad idea but he needs some pretense, some other ruse and he thinks quickly, Bashir the first face to spring to mind which is.. Unexpected but he goes with it the idea already forming as he starts fixing the folded garments to perfect proportions. 

“Assistance hm… assistance assistance right that’s expected that’s… that’s a Good question right Jack right mmhm. I do as a matter of fact have a question What… what do you think of Bashir?” he asks tersely as he folds, eyes darting over to the Cardassian who gracefully steps around the counter seeming to check his work behind him.

 

That Irritates him.

 

“A curious inquiry but I suppose the answer would depend on the nature of the inquiry,” Garak answers again with a strange expression.

 

And Jack thinks on that because they already made the proposal (really at Lauren and Patrick’s insistence on his “Judgement” of all things!) but it’s a Safe place to start so he asks with a smile, thinking if they’re as close a friends as body language, at searching eyes at the sound of that name would suggest, then the answer ought to tell him him quite a bit about the nature of Cardassians. 

“Hm hm hm the nature of the inquiry! The nature of man! The nature of all things so… so let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table! Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells. Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question.” There, that was easier, much easier, speaking the words of Elliot rather than his own, his shoulders relaxing, unbunching, the stress of his face  _ relaxed _ .

 

“And what question would that be?” Garak asks him, Jack having stopped folding, breathing more easily as more words flash through his mind absconded, acted out like the most grand performance in existence. Jack smiles with a waggle of his eyebrows because it’s always easier to speak as that something that isn’t Jack as he leans in and says:

“Do you think Doctor Bashir should rule the world?”

 


	5. Transformation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interlude back at the Institute looking at some of the less "sexy" side effects of Lauren's enhancements.

"You don’t like Van Vogt." Jack looks up from the book, from the comforting paper pages in his hand flipping through his fingers.  He looks Lauren in the eyes because he knows that Tone and he knows what it means and he looks over at Patrick working on a small scale robot on the table. It’s a dragonfly, shimmering iridescent wings that flicker blue green when it’s dark and  Jack looks from it to Lauren as she stands up from the table. Breaking it would be easy. Breaking it would be best because Patrick would leave before it gets Bad but then Nurse Ratched would come in, would release the hounds, and Jack is afraid of the sedatives.

 

So is Lauren.

 

"I like him sometimes, you know that just like you know that Farnham’s Freehold is far from Heinlen’s best work but-"

"Why are you lying?" Lauren asks as she backs away. Not good, not good, reality is shifting, the walls are moving, this  _ isn't _ the Correct reality and sometimes he knows how to fix it and sometimes he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to get Patrick out of the room or Sarina either so he steps between them. 

“Is the book… the book he only thing that isn’t right?” Jack asks slowly slowly knowing that Reality had Shifted and Lauren is Unstuck and there’s a pull she says that’s trying to rip her head out of her body and throw her across the galaxy.

 

“This isn’t right.” Lauren says sounding more unsure, looking at the walls, counting the bolts, measuring the seams, trying to find anything anything, a gyre, a gimble, a monster to fight so he runs through it all sure he’s between her and Patrick because more often than not Patrick is the one that isn’t right and Jack has the little bloody Nurse counter telling him when they’ll be checking in de-escalate, draw it down sundown, throw a blanket over the shrieking so it sleeps. Except except that Lauren is as strong as him, as fast as him and he’s trying to find out when the divergence is so he can try and Fix it before she starts screaming. 

 

Patrick can’t handle the screaming.

 

So he talks and talks, careful not to touch, biting his thumb, hover around the table, sitting on it in front of her eye contact slow slow carefully no matter how much his leg shakes until he can be sure that her eyes clear or that she’ll forget why she’s there and try and escape and she was doing better until Deep Space Nine, until Bashir who she still screams is coming for her, coming to rescue her, coming to save her and every time he has to tell her that Bashir isn’t coming as she screams that if he’s not coming it’s because Jack  _ killed _ him but he keeps talking because anything else would hurt her and he doesn’t… doesn’t want that.

 

And then she asks for Julian again and he closes his eyes knowing the episode is only going to get worse so he takes a deep breath and gets ready to be blamed once more for inciting violence.

 

Jack wishes they’d never met Julian Bashir.

 


	6. Simple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Sarina have a moment at the Institute while considering her surgery.

_ “Will you dance with me when I’m no longer weak _

_ Will you listen long when I can speak _

_ Will you hold my hand when my eyes can cry _

_ Will you let me go if I say goodbye” _

 

Jack reads the words over and over, commits the to memory, the lines of pen shaky and unsteady handwriting on the paper and he folds and folds until it forms a small paper crane. The two of them are seated on the floor and he wants to say yes, yes, to everything because Sarina has been his world since he met her and realized that… that he didn’t need to hear her voice to know her but… But he doesn’t understand the last line. He doesn’t understand why she would want to leave him when he couldn’t imagine walking out those doors if it meant leaving her behind. 

 

He would spend eternity in a box... 

Blind- he doesn’t need to see her and it’s always too bright anyway 

Deaf- he’s never heard her speak and it would stop all the other rattle and hum so-

Mute- he doesn’t need to talk, he’s grown to hate the sound of his own voice and it would only be fair if she was the one filling the silence 

If he wasn’t alone…

If she was there to hold his hand...

He would give up every memory he’s ever held

 

She’s afraid that it will hurt and he tells her that’s ridiculous because he’d never suggest something that would hurt her,  _ Bashir _ would never agree to something that would hurt her.

 

Jack swallows that name down, the two of them seated on the floor of his room in the dark quiet corner, leaning against each other in silence. His finger finds its way to his mouth, his legs shake up and down left knee, right knee, waves on the ocean he’ll never see again. It will hurt… just… just not her, he thinks, staring hard at the paper crane on his desk. Netta once told him that an old Japanese belief went that folding a thousand paper cranes would grant one wish from the gods so if he folds a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, then surely  _ surely _ that would be enough to grant him just… just one wish and then he’d never ever ask for anything else after that.

 

When he asks Nurse Ratched the next day, swallow, fists clenched, bile in his throat, if he can replicate a thousand sheets of paper she says no.

 

He wonders if the gods have ever granted a wish from just one tattered crane.


	7. Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As they're preparing to leave The Institute, Jack has his anxieties.

“Looking sharp,” Lauren compliments as she takes a step back, admiring Patrick in the Starfleet uniform. Jack smiles too because this was his idea after all, and everything is coming along perfectly. Patrick is the one doing all the talking because they know that he can’t… can’t speak the words properly and Patrick can, regal, austere, “That’s a stupid question” which Jack… Jack tried to say in front of the mirror but it kept coming out Wrong and lauren told him that Patrick was a far better actor.

 

He hates when Lauren is right.

 

“And me?” Jack asks, Lauren looking at him calmly, but not answering, because there’s that  _ demand _ in his tone but if he doesn’t ask then he’s afraid that one day she’ll forget to say it or she won’t want to say it, and Sarina always tells him that he’s put together Impeccably but… but Sarina is biased and Lauren is always  _ honest _ as long as her head’s working right and god would it kill her just to humor him because he’s working on his tone and he’s  _ trying _ because he might just might have something to try for and-

 

She waves him off, starting to fuss with her own uniform, and he tells himself a thousand times it’s  _ not _ because he doesn’t look right.

 

“Forget it,” he says with a scowl, taking a deep breath with a quick muttered “sorry” that she ignores as she continues brushes her hair back. He tugs at the cuffs, the uniform not as warm as he’s accustomed to and he keeps tugging one even then the other, his eyes telling him that they’re not Right and he can feel the tension deepen on his face as he tries to  _ fix  _ it. Jack turns as he feels Sarina butt into him from the side and that expression flips back to normal. Right, stupid, who cares if Lauren “strokes his ego.” Sarina let him know earlier she thought he looked handsome and… and there were the letters highlighted ILY-EWW which was a simple one, a simple poem that he was able to find and he read it almost as blankly as Sarina’s own face.

 

_ I love your eyes when the lovelight lies _

_ Lit with a passionate fire… _

 

He hears the lines repeated in his head as she stares straight on. They exchange poetry, letters, live in some boxed Eden as Lauren says with a shake of her head as if there’s something that Jack is missing. Well, Lauren doesn’t know what she’s talking about he decides, and Lauren thought from the start that the two of them together was a Bad idea, so Sarina saves her looking in private, when she can looking at him for hours, him looking back, wondering what her look will look like when she can process his face in the blink of an eye, wondering what she’ll sound like when she can speak the words herself.

 

He doesn’t allow himself to imagine her voice saying “goodbye”.


	8. Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's existential anxiety adds to the rift between him and Sarina after her surgery, and he has a hard time coping.

"She still doesn't have anything to say to you," Lauren relays  to him with her usual dismissive tone as she enters the cargo bay and takes a seat. "She said that if you're actually sorry then you can come tell her yourself. By yourself." Her tone sounds just slightly sympathetic and Jack bites down harder on his finger than he’d expected and jumps in response. 

"What? No no no you must have misheard her, you must have been fixated on the Ferengi and  _ not paying attention _ because you know she would never say that!"

“She said it Jack, and she meant it.”

 

He looks from Lauren to Patrick, pacing, pacing, biting, holding himself tightly because that is crossing the World, crossing the sea of stars when he’s already drowning already sitting on the rim of the well of darkness fishing for answers answers, that well trying to pull him in, those tidepools trying to drown him, grabbing him by the feet and he swears he if steps outside it will devour him and already he can’t breathe which is why he even told her to be quiet, yelled, was loud loud and it Won’t. Stop.

 

He stops looking between Lauren and Patrick because they understand, they  _ have _ to understand that it’s… that is The End coming for him and he Can’t Get Away from it ever ever every moment every cell is dying and soon they’ll stop being reborn and soon the star will stop being reborn, soon soon and it IS soon and she used to Understand that! Sarina used to Understand when he said that he felt that panic, when he was afraid his heart would start beating so fast that it would burst and into atoms his consciousness and sixty billion years is Nothing when your existence blinks out and time has no meaning because time is a Construct for cellular decay and he’s positive Positive the last time his conscious self existed when the oxygen concentration was higher and he Remembers famine and hunger and dying in that sun bleached desert stomach pain pain two hundred fifty two million years ago and if there’s nothing but darkness in his memories between then and now then he only has two hundred thirty eight more lifetimes before it ends at best at best and-

 

“Jack?” Patrick. Patrick is tall but… no Patrick isn’t tall, Jack is on the floor with his head on his knees, hands on his head trying to drive it out, trying to make that terror stop because they still haven’t solved it and-

“Jack!” Lauren. He looks up at Lauren now and points to his throat, to his chest because he can’t breathe because they haven’t figured it out and fine fine he didn’t mean to yell he swears he didn’t mean it but he’s going to die imprisoned and blinked away and everything will End and it will be nothing but walls and gray and he’ll never-

“The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light,” he hears Patrick say and he stops because… that time already passed and that makes no sense and Patrick doesn’t say stupid pointless things normally so- “The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way…” Patrick sits cross legged in front of him and Jack can see from the look on his face that he’s reciting, parroting back so Jack redirects his thoughts and Understands it’s a story that… that still makes no sense but he’s curious about the last question that someone would imagine being asked three hundred years ago.

 

So he listens, heart still pounding but slowing just a bit as Patrick talks, putting a hand out for Jack to hold which Jack doesn’t always like but… Sarina isn’t here and he needs to breathe and Patrick continues, the conversation between the two men a Good distraction to calm his racing thoughts as he follows along, Lauren sitting down behind him, a hand on his back like he does for her when the… not real things get confusing so he breathes along, staring at his and Patrick’s hands as Patrick keeps talking and Jack thinks he’d make a much better teacher than any  _ he _ had ever had. Not a better attorney than his, never that but-

“Or maybe it could be put more simply like this: How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?”

 

He stops blinking at that, paying attention, paying careful attentions, jump starting breathing when Lauren hits his back as the Multivac become the Galactic AC and the Universal AC and it ends with a trifling religious metaphor that he would scoff at but… but somehow after that reading, after the flow of Time was forced to Patrick’s recitation it seems easier now and he can work with this and he can do this. 

 

Jack squeezes Patrick’s hand and smiles. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to talk about this a little because it's a tough scene to watch- that is where Jack is talking about the end of the universe and yells after Sarina points out the flaw in one of their theories. Just from personal experience on that exact anxiety I wanted to show it with more depth than just "Jack is a paranoid asshole" who doesn't like to be questioned. I thought a lot about this scene, not just this scene but also, Jack being up all night with his heart pounding so wildly he can't breath, the horror of that all consuming fear, the terror that wells up so badly at the idea of "the end of everything", the death of the universe, of not existing and wanted to share that since it can be hard to relate to if you've never experienced it. 
> 
> Lastly, I wanted to portray more of the bond between the Jack Pack because I love it so much.


	9. Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack apologizes to Sarina

Jack holds his right index finger out, eyes looking down at the floor between them. His left fist is clenched tight. He didn't say anything when Sarina opened the door, bringing that finger up, pointing at her. Jack isn't pointing. He's apologizing. Jack doesn't say “sorry” to apologize. “Sorry” is just the  _ thing _ expected to be said. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t care or  _ doesn’t understand- _ it has to be said because that is why civilizations crumble! “Sorry”, is a response to a careful catalogue of facial, tonal, and verbal cue; ,he’s very proud that he never forgets to say it. But then… people stopped believing him. He didn’t understand because he absolutely  _ always _ said on cue when he was Wrong. So Patrick, (never had an Ivy to make him brave, poor thing) help him create gesture. They know thats’ the Real “sorry”.

 

He never showed it to Nurse Ratched.

 

Jack had tried to breathe deeply before the door opened but it… wasn’t working so he’s holding his breath instead. He can hold his breath for four minutes and fifty one seconds; he has another three minutes and forty nine seconds. It’s difficult to make eye contact because if her look isn’t Good, that vice around his chest will keep closing tighter and tighter and his palms will start sweating and someone might come by and he… he can’t handle People right now and-  Sarina looks... relieved? Alright. He can understand that. If Bashir was parading  _ him _ around the station with all those People, with his big self satisfied smirk, then he would be relieved to see anyone else. 

 

She raises her finger to meet his - a small press - and he lets out the breath feeling dizzy but… he’s also relieved. Jack smiles back, wide, teeth, relaxed until he realizes that he’s still standing in the hallway with potential People so he doesn’t know why she’s just standing there and not asking him in and he’s biting his finger again, trying,  _ trying _ not to demand because Lauren keeps reminding him tone,  _ tone _ is Essential and people don’t like him because of his tone and demands and she tells him over and over that he’s tone deaf to the world. 

“Breathe, Jack,” Sarina urges him softly.

 

Jack nods. Jack breathes, waiting for her to ask him in because just… just this once he wants to try so desperately not to be Wrong… and he once said he would always wait for her even if she never said a word to him. Sarina steps back. Jack jumps through the doorway, escaping Fenrir devouring the world behind him. He’s shaking when it closes and he  _ knows _ this is the part where he tells her why he’s sorry and why she’s his… no… not that, that… still doesn’t feel right. 

 

They speak at the same time.

 

"I'm glad you're here."

“Please don’t leave.”

 

They stop, look at each other, and start again.

 

_ "You're the only one who understands me." _


	10. Thanks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lauren consoles Jack after they realize Sarina isn't coming back.

“She isn’t coming back with me.” Jack says, the first time saying “me” instead of us. He bites his thumb, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, leg shaking. He looks from Lauren to Patrick. Patrick looks to Lauren. They both nod. Patrick picks up a PADD and steps away to read one of the old novels Bashir had brought, likely out of guilt. Jack snorts. Bashir doesn’t feel guilt; if he did it sure wouldn’t be for Jack. Lauren slides over on her seat, making room. Jack paces back and forth a moment, the only sounds those of his shoes loudly on the floor.

 

The cargo bay echos painfully. It’s miserable and sterile. Jack opens his mouth, closes it, and bites his finger again. He shuts his eyes tightly, focusing on the sounds of his breaths, and he realizes they’re not steady. He hates that. He hates this room, he hates this miserable station, and he hates the _normal_ Bashir who has everything that Jack has ever wanted. He opens his eyes and looks down to the empty space where Sarina has been sleeping- or rather _hadn’t_ been sleeping because she usually preferred Jack’s bed even without him in it.

 

Bashir has _everything_ Jack has ever wanted.

 

“I apologized.” He didn’t say he was sorry. “Sorry” wasn’t an apology. Jack _apologized._ Sarina forgave him. But none of that mattered because-

“That wasn’t enough,” Lauren finishes. Jack practically throws himself on the cushion, clutching his sweater tighter around him. He’s cold. He’s always cold here. His jaw is tight as he tries to be still.

“Of _course_ it wasn’t. You know it wasn’t. You know what’s _wrong_ with me and-”

“Stop.” Lauren says firmly putting a hand on his shoulder. She sets the PADD aside. “There are a lot of things wrong with all of us. But _not_ that. It’s just who you are, Jack.”

 

He sucks in a breath kneading at her thigh, nails making runs in the nylon.

“You don’t think I know that? Of course I know that but it’s why she’s with Bashir right now and not me so it’s _wrong_ !” Lauren sighs and flicks his ear. It irritates him the same as him making runs in her stockings. “Don’t tell me it’s her loss! What’s her loss hm?!” He stands up abruptly. “Getting to leave after eating the pomegranate seeds hmhm? Getting someone who _functions_ ?! I _tried_ … I t-tried! But it’s... h-hard to…” To kiss someone, to be intimate when those sensations are too much, overwhelming, and things near his mouth make him anxious. People touching him terrify him because he always hurts them, and they’re afraid of him and-

 

“I know,” she answers softly, holding her arms open. He doesn’t even realize he’s moved until he’s shivering against her, face buried damp against her shoulder. It hurts. But Lauren is strong. Lauren doesn’t want those things from him and… Lauren isn’t afraid of him. More importantly-

 

“...Thank you.”

 

Lauren is his best friend.


	11. Silver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack asks Sarina to marry him before she leaves

“I don’t understand. What do you mean you can’t marry me? We’re okay. I came here, all the way here like like you wanted - twice now! - and you know that’s not not easy…”

“Jack you’ve never said a word before about marriage.”

“Well you’ve never said a word before period! Hmhm.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“You’re right you’re right but I… I don’t know what else to to say so  let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. You hate my voice, you hate me talking. I know you do.”

“O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. You’re… you’re always Sarina, made up, dressed down, speaking, not speaking. It doesn’t matter, it never mattered.”

 

“It is the star to every wand'ring bark, whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. You don’t love me Jack! I don’t love you! We’ve just been… been living in this dream because everything else was such a nightmare!”

“Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come. You have time. I don’t hm. I never did I never do I… I don’t have anything anything there if you’re not there and I… I won’t be able to stop thinking about you because there’s nothing else and it’s empty and even if you never come back if I look and it’s there I can… I can… breathe.”

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. Do you think I want that for you? You were… you were all that I had too and now there’s everything and I’m scared and I… I wish you were going with me because Julian and everyone else is so nice, but they don’t understand! I don’t want you to be sitting in your room looking at your finger and giving up!”

 

“If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. If not you then who? There isn’t isn’t anyone else for me but you, Sarina…”

“God, you and Julian… you really have no idea how alike you are. You’d think the three of us were the only three people in the galaxy.”

“The only three like us. If you… if you need him because I can’t… because I can’t…”

“Stop. Both of you are just… just too much and I don’t… but… but what if it was just the two of you. What if you stayed, Jack?”

“Stay? I can’t stay, I can’t just prison break because there are rules and as Bashir is so so fond of saying there’s Trouble and Consequences a thousand years in Purgatory before being thrown back to the inferno hmhm.”

“You’re never going to get out of there if you go back. You… you  _ have _ to stay, Jack.”

 

“Why? Because your boyfriend’s lonely? I don’t care, Bashir can perish.”

“Because  _ you’re _ lonely and Julian is… Julian won’t give up. If he believes in you then he won’t let  _ you _ give up. Find Netta, find the records, get you  _ out _ and I’ll help you. Before I go we’ll work it out and I’ll help you get ready.”

“This is… a Bad Idea.”

“Asking me to marry you was a Bad Idea.”

“It wasn’t bad just… just impetuous!”

“Well… so is this.”

 

Sarina takes the ring, placing it in the replicator, and replicating another, two silver bands in her hand. She puts one on her right hand and the other on Jack’s right pinkie.

 

“Take me as your lawful unwed friend?”

“I… I do! Do… do you? You’ll say you do to right? Hm?”

“If you let me talk.”

“Right… right. I… I’m glad. I’ll try I… I promise promise…  _ Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn the living record of your memory _

_ “I do. I promise, Jack… I promise we’ll both be happy.” _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In ways I like Jack and Sarina together but in general I think of their romantic relationship as one that can only exist at a certain time under certain conditions and plays out much like a younger love, going through the motions exuberantly but no actually having a deep and lasting romantic connection when faced with the outside world.


	12. Formal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarina helps Jack get ready to meet Julian to help petition for his stay.

“This smells nice.”

“Of course it smells nice. It’s an Essential hm- classic scent, medium hold hmhm, I’m not an animal,” Jack grumbles, pacing in Sarina’s room. He made it here again, a walk across the great black ocean, the sea of stars swirling beneath his feet. His shoes are polished star bright- if there’s one thing he’s never gotten Wrong it’s Appearance.

“Sit,” Sarina orders, pointing to the couch- she’s gotten bossy since she started talking, but he catches a smile. Usually Jack is the one pointing “sit” and he… deserves that and she deserves better than him- better than  _ Bashir _ .

 

_ “Mais je n'aurai plus d'envie, Il s'est chargé de ma vie…”  _ Jack whispers. He never understands why his voice is steady when he recites. Maybe he should become a parrot.

_ “O saisons, ô châteaux.  _ Dramatic much?” She flicks his ear, same as Lauren. His foot taps anxiously, tapping tapping- “No Poe,” she interrupts (she’s a mindreader!) and he  _ listens  _ to her tone, having only a short time to learn her voice. Jack thinks she’s expressing... levity, lightness, that unbearable lightness of being that’s always escaped him. Is that what freedom means? 

 

Jack nods sharply, not sitting in silence long, not caught in his head like he’s always done around her because she was  _ quite clear _ that she won’t let him brood- stuck trapped in his mind. He’d scoffed, asking how she’d do that light years off. She said that she can’t but “ _ Julian _ ” will. “Julian”. Not “Bashir”. Jack doesn’t know “Julian”, Jack knows Bashir and he still doesn’t believe her when she says if he stays, shows them he can  _ adapt _ , (not be Normal, but Adapt), then he doesn’t have to go back.

He just has to convince Bashir, Sarina says.

 

Jack bites his thumb, yanking it back out of his mouth when she warms the waxy pomade between her fingers and starts running it through his hair. He said he could do it himself but she insisted- for all the times he’d brushed her hair for her patiently, gently, and he… didn’t know what to say. Sarina has nice hair and it wasn’t fair that Lauren was the only one who could touch it. So of course he’d brush it for her. She smiled again when he said that and he… looks out at the stars with a sigh, leg still shaking jitterbug jitterbug and she asks him what he’s thinking.

“The stars,” he mumbles. “I was… thinking what it must be like to be a star hm.”

“Happy or sad, Jack?” Sarina stops, resting her chin on his shoulder from behind, quietly, gently like she always used to. He blinks a few times, wishing that he was someone like Bashir (but  _ not  _ Bashir,!) who could turn and kiss her, or let her kiss him, and feel those stirrings but...

“…I don’t know...” He sighs, thumb coming back up and he swears he’s going to  _ sit on his hands _ when he finds hers there instead. 

“Me neither.”

 

_ “Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was.” _

 


	13. Tremble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack asks Julian if he can stay.

“Jack?” he hears asked before the command for the lights. “What are you doing here?” comes as the lights do and Jack sees the expression on Bashir’s face. Bashir doesn’t want him here. This was a Bad idea and he told Sarina it was a Bad idea but he also promised Sarina that he would try. The reports say that Jack doesn’t  _ try _ and doesn’t  _ care _ about getting better because five years of torture, five years of  _ trying _ before Nurse Ratched came in with her sinister and cold smile and told him that she was going to see to him and she was going to  _ help  _ him didn’t get him anything so-

“What are you doing in my room?” Bashir repeats and there’s no warmth in his eyes, no warmth in his voice, a step above angry. It’s calm doctor cold and it’s a step away from summoning the guards and Jack can’t say it just like he knew he wouldn’t be able to. So he doesn’t. He stands and bows, and holds out the PADD that Sarina gave him. 

“Take it…  _ please _ ,” he adds, relieved when Basir takes it with a look. Jack’s arms immediately snap back around himself, biting his fingers trying to breathe. Lauren said once that maybe the problem wasn’t his ribs but his arms being too tight making it hard to breathe. Wrong. Very wrong.

 

Jack waits. Jack is still, staring at the floor, counting things because it’s the only way that he can be still without pacing, without needing to jump to move or exercise those restless nerves and those muscles that need to move. He knows the the letter says. He knows what the letter  _ is. _ It’s Emotional Manipulation and he hates it. It’s guilt and it’s barely better than lies and Sarina knew that when she wrote it but-  _ “I want you to have a chance, Jack.”  _ Because he isn’t getting Better and she knows that and whatever… can’t be between the two of them-

 

Bashir looks up as Jack expected quick, the expression on his face changing with every word just like Jack had imagined after he, himself had read it. Bashir blinks at him dumbly, conflicted, those words echoing back  _ “I know you feel guilty for what happened and I forgive you but if you still don’t feel that enough, would you please help Jack?...”  _ She said Bashir was lonely, needy, desperate, and Jack thinks that he’s like Baudelaire’s king of a rain-country for whom nothing will ever satisfy but… he is the king that Jack must swear fealty to and so he smiles.

 

He thinks he smiles and he clears his throat and tries to talk but that crushing calcium vices cradling his organs get tighter and tighter  and he swallows and tries again and manages a “p-please…” before he has to look back to the ground and count the little lines on the floor. He can feel Bashir’s eyes going back and forth from the words to him, every second the shadow growing larger and Jack is itching to be up higher, higher where nothing can touch him and the shadows can’t converge.

 

The eyes don’t want him. They want Sarina. The eyes don’t care that his hair is fixed or his shoes are polished and he’s  _ trying _ to stand up straight and  _ trying _ to smile and be silent because to the eyes he isn’t Sarina and he isn’t Worthy because he’s  _ never _ worthy. 

“I’m sorry I don’t know what to say. I’m afraid you’ve caught me off guard and it’s… it’s not as simple a matter as you or Sarina seem to believe.” A sigh, tired, irritated and Jack sees a hand reaching for his shoulder resting lightly, comforting though it doesn’t linger. The hand wants to be rid of him too.

 

But even if it wants to be rid of him it feels nice in that moment and there’s a moment, just a blink that he sees Bashir look at im as something other than a Problem to be solved and he knows that if he goes back that no one will ever look at him like that again after Patrick and Lauren leave and he’ll be trapped in those exponential  _ huhuva _ lifetimes chatter chatter and he… he can’t do it. It comes to him now that he’s so close. Now that Jack is here in a room and Bashir is stepping back with a sad shake of his head, with the shadows closing in and his ribs crushing and… 

 

“Wait.” That’s him. That’s his voice speaking and he can feel the vice twist twist and he can feel himself start to shake, his fingers starting to tremble and that’s…. Very annoying because he  _ needs _ to do this and it doesn’t matter what his head and his nerves are screaming at him-

“What are you doing?” he hears Bashir ask Stupidly as his fingers just can’t…. Just can’t make the buttons work and his eyes don’t seem to be working either and-

“Obviously I’m unbuttoning my sweater hm. Sarina didn’t do this but I know you know what it looks like so why would you ask such a stupid question? It looks the same when a man takes his clothes off doesn’t it?”

 

It’s cold. It’s always cold and he gives up on the third button just ripping the other two because if he stops he’s not going to be able to keep going and-

“Um… right, I can see that but I don’t understand  _ why _ you’re taking your sweater off.”

“If you can’t figure that much out then you’re either lying about your romantic entanglements or you need to read the letter again now would you  _ please  _ stop interrupting me with stupid questions hmhm.” Because if Bashir says another stupid thing, Jack thinks as his hands almost freeze completely on the lighter sweater under the sweater, he’s not… not going to be able to do this at all. 

 

Jack closes his eyes at the last drop of Bashir’s stupid mouth open because the picture is getting blurry again and he’s starting to feel dizzy and  _ cold _ and he’s sure that’s why he’s shaking as the sweater comes off leaving just the white t shirt.

“Jack-”

“God, don’t you don’t you listen, I said-”

“Jack,” spoken softer, quieter, and Jacks eyes snap back open, and he realizes his hands are  _ stuck _ on the thin shirt and he thinks it’s another breathing problem and if he can start breathing again then he can start moving again.

“I need to do this and I’m not going back there I’m not going back there and if S-Sarina couldn’t then I can I  _ can _ I swear I can if you just shut up and stop talking and-”

 

“It’s alright,” he hears Bashir say. “Please stop,” he feels hands over his. “You don’t need to do that,” and he’s afraid to look anywhere but at the blur of the gray Starfleet uniform in front of his eyes. 

 

“You can stay.”

 


	14. Accusation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's only one true John J. Merriweather

“You lied to me,” Bashir says, sitting down and sighing. 

“I don’t lie,” Jack snaps, turning. Bashir is very tall, a judgemental skyscraper blocking out the light. He’s a wendigo, blood dripping at the mouth, empty eye sockets staring hollowly and… No! Just a man, just a man... Jack stands up quickly, out of the darkness. Bashir hands him the PADD.

“You’re not Jonathan J. Merriweather. That man is,” Bashir informs him coldly. The moment the words are spoken, Jack drops the PADD and steps back. He knows what it will say- what he’ll see. He’s seen it before. Jack takes another step back, not looking at Bashir, arms coiled around himself tightly. His room is the only warm place and now Bashir’s made it cold.

 

“I know what it says hm. I know what that  _ thing  _ looks like. You don’t think I know what it says?! Do you think I’m stupid hm hm?! Do you think I’m a liar hmhmhm?!”

“I think,” Bashir answers patronizing doctor calm, “Jack’s having an episode” calm and he… no one ever listens to him. “I think,” Bashir repeats, remaining seated, non threatening, so “the Dangerous Augment” doesn’t overreact, “that you may have imagined you had that life. I understand that you’ve spent a long time at The Institute. I understand that your family doesn’t visit you the same as the other three. So I can understand why you might like to have a different life. But I know what the files say. Your name is-”

“Jack Cheswick,” Jack interrupts, Bashir doesn’t understand anything.

 

Bashir is blank. Jack hates it... so much because Sarina swore that  _ Julian  _ would understand, would listen to him. She swore that if he stayed behind and behaved that they could stop the buzzing in his head, make him sleep, make him  _ breathe _ , but it’s all the same and he… can’t do this because there Is No Julian; Only Bashir. ANd Bashir read the file and the file is full of Lies. The file says that he killed a man. The file doesn’t say that he wanted to see if he could fly, that a basic would have died from the fall, that They took his name when they locked him away and replaced him with something wearing his face.

“They let me keep Jack- didn’t take Jack from me mmhm. They hated Jack. They just t-took everything else and… and why should the world be over-wise in counting all our tears and sighs?”

“Paul Lawrence Dunbar,” Bashir supplies, so  _ stupidly _ for a mutant. Why did Sarina have to leave him alone?!

 

Jack holds his breath when Bashir stands up and retrieves the PADD from the floor.  _ Speak _ , he hears in his head.  _ Speak _ and someone might finally-

“Cheswick was the one who drowned,” Jack says through gritted teeth. He shoots his arm out, feeling sick when Julian draws back. “Take my blood. Take it and and ch-check it against the profile. Not the one on file. The  _ real _ one… the one from Bellevue.” Where he was born, where the oldest New York hospital survived three world wars and still stands. “Take it!” He expects Bashir to flinch. Bashir doesn’t. Bashir takes his hand and lowers it gently. There were specific things that couldn’t be duplicated and he knows the old basement still should have it if They didn’t purge it.

“Alright. Alright I’ll be back with my equipment,” he whispers, and for a moment, Jack thinks that he actually sees Julian.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief note that Jack has no canon [or even beta canon] last name. For continuity in all my stories I use "John J 'Jack' Merriweather". Inspired by my cousin's husband "John J" who goes by "Jack".


	15. Thousand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian helps Jack with his wish

“Jack” Bashir enters his room - he has a room now because he  _ wasn’t lying _ \- and he’s sure that he didn’t let him in but he doesn’t care because he’s busy and he doesn’t have time and his days have been so filled with the station and  _ rules _ and Things he needs to remember that he doesn’t have any Time. There’s a counter, counting up, Sarina looking at him through a frosted glass, her fingers slowly marking off lines for the minutes that it’s been since she left, the glass expanding every day to account for those units of time until it’s a massie wall on the surface of the moon. He folds, quickly, compulsively, finally allowed to have the paper he needs knowing it’s superstition, knowing that it’s Nonsense but also knowing that he doesn’t have anything else.

 

“You didn’t check in for dinner so I was concerned,” Bashir says in that Careful and soft voice. “Remember the agreement was that you could have a room if you agreed to check in.” Jack can feel the tension growing in his shoulders as he sits on the table cross legged, folding another, sending it flying towards the imaginary heavens, feeling that vibration in his legs because he isn’t an  _ animal _ and he isn’t going to do anything except sit here and behave and  _ try _ and he’s sure they’ve all read the file because they all avoid eye contact, they all hand back from him, they all Look at him like he’s a monster and it’s better if he stays here folding, folding because they don’t want him there any way.

 

“What did you think I was going to kidnap someone? Take hostages? Take the station? Bring chaos? Mischief hmhm?” Bashir is silent too long to that and Jack wants to look up at him but looking at Bashir always makes him angry because according to Sarina he’s supposed to be here for Bashir except Bashir has every damn thing that Jack has ever wanted so why should he be just another one of the normal passing Jekyll’s toys? Why does Midas get another victim to touch and turn to gold. Jack catches Bashir reaching out for him and turns quickly, jerking back, falling off the table. “What are you doing?!” he demands, rolling backwards, crushing cranes with a sickening lurch of his stomach.

 

“Right, right,” Bashir says sound two tenths more human, “Sorry, I know you  don’t want anyone touching you and… Okay I was concerned about what you might be doing but… that was unfair of me and I’m sorry. I promise, when I saw you sitting here I wasn’t thinking about it any longer.” He takes another step, a long cast of that stupid shadow and Jack is on his feet, drawn up, standing on the sofa so that it’s no longer touching him. He breathes, chewing his thumb, silence between them, the station humming, his head buzzing, staring at the cranes that he’ll need to  _ fix _ and he sees Bashir looking as if he might touch one of them but he doesn’t. Instead he takes a sheet of paper from the stack and sits down at the table.

 

He’s not Tall anymore and Jack hops off the sofa, circling him carefully before taking a hesitant seat back on the table’s surface.

“It looks like you’ve already got a thousand,” Bashir says as he begins folding. Jack takes a piece of paper warily and begins maybe just… a little faster.

“Nine hundred three.”

“Well then, suppose we’ll be done in no time, won’t we?” Bashir looks like he’s going faster too.

“Ten thousand… I need ten thousand.” As a precaution. To be safe, to wish ten times for just one thing that-

“May I ask why?” Two cranes finished.

“No you may not,” Jack answers with a rip of paper off the stack, folding even faster, the two of them continuing to fold in silence Jack counting up to nine hundred and twenty.

 

“If it were me,” Bashir begins as if Jack wants to know what Bashir wants! “I would wish for someone who understands me. Someone to talk to, someone that I could…” He stops a moment, Jack’s sharp eyes catching that motion. 

“We will be what we would be. Do not say, it might have been, had not this, or that, or this. No fate can keep us from the chosen way,” Jack recites to himself interrupting Bashir’s stupid self pity.

“Ella Wheeler Wilcox,” Bashir answers automatically like a machine and Jack is about to tell him obviously but he’s… happy to still have someone who understands the words, that someone knows what he’s saying and he sees the Sarina counter behind the frosted glass looking at him, blinking slowly before writing in slow measured strokes on the glass between the counted minutes.  _ ”Please be kind to Julian, Jack.” _

 

That echoes, painfully, his chest tight, ribs tight, breathing hard, and his hands stop still on the half folded crane. He swallows a few times because he.. Doesn’t do this. He doesn’t talk like this unless it’s Sarina or Lauren or sometimes Patrick if it’s nothing too upsetting so he… closes his eyes a moment, letting himself see her in that perfect memory vault, looking at him silently, that message remaining, the minutes ticking off around it, the words like a memorial to his memory of her. He slows his folding, the creases careful, methodical, deeper than the others. He can’t… say that they’re for Sarina because that another of those Selfish wishes that just leads to castigations, aspersions,  _ what’s wrong with you Jack?! _

 

So he chooses his words Carefully, looking at the white paper thinking of snow. He bites his thumb and breathes again and again trying to inflate the stuck balloon.

“I… I would wish… not to be alone.”

A pause and he feels sick, but doesn’t see Bashir looking at him, instead looking at the paper in his hands.

“You wouldn’t rather have your freedom?” It’s such a painful echo of his conversation with Sarina that he hiccups a laugh.

“Freedom isn’t real. Loneliness is real. Pain is real. Emptiness, Eternity, Death, Entropy! Those are real!” he bangs his hand on the table - “Freedom. Is. Not. Real!” - hard enough to make the stack of papers jump, his palm like a hammer but… Bashir doesn’t shy away or flinch, but look to the perfectly folded crane with the sharp corners silently. 

 

Bashir wordlessly takes another piece of paper and continues folding.

 


	16. Prepared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack gets ready for a dinner with Julian's friends.

Bashir said this was a bad idea. Ah, not Bashir,  _ Julian,  _ Jack reminds himself. He’s Julian now. When Julian looks at Jack that isn’t that condescending “normal Bashir” skyscraper look but… but something else. It’s  _ not _ pity, he tells himself. Why would anyone pity him? He’s better than they are. He repeats that softly as he scrubs at his face. The inferior are pitied and that’s  _ not him _ and he’s  _ not afraid _ and he can do this because he’s Capable, and they’ll see that’s he’s better than the thing they replaced him with!

“Clean, bright skin, pleasing smile mmhm, posture, posture, stop hugging yourself Jack,  stop biting your fingers, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU!”

 

He stops.  _ Silent like the forest, silent like the forest…  _ Julian said this was a bad idea because he doesn’t think that Jack can  _ handle  _ being around so many people. Jack’s hands shake as he splashes the cold water over his face. His damp fingers run through his hair too hard, nails raking his scalp over and over until it hurts but that’s alright. That relaxes him. Relaxed is Good. Relaxed, he can speak normally. He doesn’t stutter as much but the stutters are better than the tics and he’s…  _ going _ to control this.  _ Yes sir, no sir, be-have it’s just… It’s just a game, it’s not real, you just have to be Normal until the clock strikes midnight and you turn back into a pumpkin. _

 

_ “Just be yourself, Jack.”  _ That’s what Sarina said as she saw him off, when he finally agreed to stay, to... keep Julian company? Company? What did a normal passing smug sanctimonious Starfleet dog know about being lonely?!  _ “You’re both more alike than you realize, Jack.” _

“Alike? Two houses alike in dignity? Did they lock that house away hm? Did they take its name? Did they steal its identity hmhm? Hide it away under the hills? Come away, O human child?” Yeats. Netta loved Yeats. So did Sarina. Jack adjusts the collar of his shirt again so he can breathe. “That’s it, it’s just the faerie world you’re going to, Jack. Smile, nod, don’t eat what they offer, don’t let them touch you...” 

 

He breathes. Julian thinks  _ dinner in public _ is a bad idea but… Jack stares at his reflection. He… isn’t Sarina. Well good! Good riddance because if Sarina couldn’t stay… if she needed Jack to stay in her place, if this is the exchange the fae demand for freedom…Damn damn his head is spinning again, too many thoughts, too many tangents, too much, too fast, too bright... Jack starts at the chime of the door. He nearly looks for a hiding spot as he adjusts the cuffs of the silk shirt again. He’s Presentable… right? Jack nearly stares a hole through the image. Is that him? Is that him pale and wan and Julian… isn’t going to look at him  _ like that _ . He bites his thumb hard.

 

He tells himself he doesn’t care.

 


	17. Diamond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bad breakdown before dinner

The mirror looks like diamonds when it shatters. Jack knows it’s going on his File as the pieces fall to the floor, his eyes slowing them down down until they appear in front of his vision like a thousand delicate snowflakes. Jack hasn’t seen snow since he was a child and he felt the little flecks melt on his skin as the sky fell down around him, all the top soil in his garden killed by rain and sleet. 

 

Jack hates the rain as his mind traps time in a bell jar relieving that moment that his fist hit the glass over and over, relieves the moment before that where he stared long at his naked body and… and wondered why he… why he was Jack and not Julian. He wondered why his body could never be still, why he couldn’t sleep, why his stomach always howled with hunger, why everything was too bright, why proper speech escaped him, why, a million whys, a million visions and revisions as the world passed by around him. 

 

“My soul is flawed,” he whispered, trembling fingers up to his mouth, biting his finger, pulling his damp hair and touching the mirror gritting his teeth. He wondered if he bit it off if it would grow back like a segmented worm or if it would sink into the ground and from it spring a perfect man. It’s cold. He shivers. It’s always cold and it was raining inside his eyes and Sarina wasn’t there because she was with Bashir and he wasn’t  _ trying _ but no matter hard hard he tried, no matter how tightly he gripped her hand, he couldn’t cross the distance between the two of them to bring their mouths together and he  _ hates _ that he ever wanted to speak because her speaking “sorry” to him is the worst sound that he’s ever heard in his life.

 

It was loud, so loud, the only sound, the only sound playing over and over in his head and it’s only when the glass shatters that there’s finally a noise loud enough to drown out the sound of the rain and the soft sound of sorry.

 

_ “I’m sorry, Jack. You’d give up freedom without thinking twice if it was to stay with me but I… I can’t do the same-” _

_ “I… I can try again, I’m sorry I… I don’t mean to it’s th-things near my mouth and that… that doesn’t work and it’s never worked but-” _

_ “I thought you said it hurts when it works.” _

_ “If Bashir’s works then I can make mine work! If I can do that, you’ll stay right? Right?!” _

_ “Jack-” _

_ “P-please…” _

 

Sarina promised this would be better.

It’s not better.

He doesn’t think it will ever be better.

 

And that’s when Bashir finds him on the floor.

 


	18. Mad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After an awkward dinner, Jack and Miles play racquetball.

         “Did Bashir tell you to wear that hm?” Jack is holding the racquet tightly to his chest, clutching it hard so that he doesn’t keep trying to bit his thumb. He made a list of everything that he needs to change, all the things that  _ stand out  _ and that’s one of them. The second one is the tics in his voice that Bashir says don’t matter unless they’re bothering  _ him _ and from what he can tell they’re a “perfectly natural extension of his atypical neurology” except… except he knows they’re Wrong so he needs to correct them. He prays he doesn’t break the racquet because he can already tell that Miles O’Brien doesn’t like him and that’s another strike against him when he knows that this is his last chance and that if no one likes him he isn’t getting any more.

          That was… the Wrong thing to say, that engineer’s face screwing up unpleasantly. Jack had to ask because Bashir told him  _ explicitly _ that there was a uniform for this except the uniform was tight and bright and Jack took one look at it and couldn’t wear it. He doesn’t feel comfortable in these clothes either, but at least they’re loose and warm. Miles is wearing the same thing and maybe Bashir was setting this up to make fun of him because Jack didn’t want to wear The Outfit? Alright that… doesn’t seem to be the case.

          This was a bad idea. This entire match invitation was a bad idea and Jack doesn’t actually know why he’s here and it makes no sense. Jack is going  going to win. He already said that at dinner (Bashir made sure to tell him how Inappropriate that was once they’d finally made it to dinner and it ended as badly as foretold) so why would O’Brien want to do this if he’s going to lose- if he’s going to be humiliated? Jack doesn’t want to humiliate him when he’s  _ trying _ to get people to like him but-  _ “You think you’re better than me?” _ was what was said when the subject had come up -silence to that from the Trill - and there was that Look from Bashir that he’d said the Wrong thing when he’d agreed, looking amongst all of them not sure why they were all  _ looking _ at him like he was… not right.

          Quantifiably yes! Jack… couldn’t lie, could he? Was he supposed to lie? Was that the trap? Why would they want him to lie?  _ I must not tell lies… _ It was the difference in tensile strength, muscle composition, bone density, neural pathways, processing, numbers, it was  _ mathematics! I _ t was the correct answer and he  _ didn’t understand  _ why three would be upset at being told it had a lower numerical value than five! Three wasn’t a bad number, it was a perfectly serviceable number but it wasn’t five!

          But here they are and here O’Brien is explaining the rules and Jack is nodding along yes, rules, structure. He’s practice swinging, trying to get a feel for it hop up, down, turn, pivot, crouch, energy, burning energy and the freedom of motion is nice and he can do this all day but he still doesn’t understand why they’re playing this, and why O’Brien even wants to play if he can’t even beat Bashir when Bashir is  _ holding back?! “Pride goeth before destruction…”  _ That’s Jack’s old man, that’s Stolas, the crowned demon owl with his precious stones quoting scriptures like the devil.

          “Are you okay?” Jack hears O'Brien asking. He’s staring, he’s fixated as Patrick would say and then say that staring is rude but it’s only because he’d turned and saw Bashir in the stands  _ staring _ down like that old owl when he was waiting for Jack to do something Wrong.  _ Why are you here? Why don’t you trust me? Why do you think I’m going to hurt people?! _

          “Of course I’m okay,” Jack snaps immediately hearing Lauren’s voice in his head yelling “tone”. He glances quick at O’Brien checking his look, calculating right, that needs a “sorry”. “Sorry,” Jack chants by rote. There’s a sigh as O’Brien asks if he’s ready and is he supposed to say something and why won’t Bashir stop staring at him?! “Ready! Start, game, set, match.” Jack repeats snapping the racquet a few more times turning around, and he wonders if this is another Test.

He wins. 

Over and over and it’s as easy as he expected and feels as terrible as he expected except-

“Why are you playing like that?” Jack asks suddenly stopping, the ball going past him.

“Well I’m sorry, we can’t all be-”

“You should be winning,” Jack says looking over at him speculatively. “Each time, every time, hands down.” Now that Jack thinks about it, O’Brien should be winning against Bashir, too. Is he teasing him? No, not a teasing expressing. Then… O'Brien really doesn’t understand why he should be winning. But it’s simple- to Jack it is. It’s consistency, it’s muscle memory, it’s an iron giant taking the same measured steps  _ step _ s  _ step swing _ that cannot be less when it’s trying to be more. It’s angles and mathematics and  _ patterns _ and things that O’Brien should be able to easily take advantage of- should know even better than any of them. Jack is winning because he’s faster, because he can react and turn more effectively but… it’s the same every time. He doesn’t get tired nearly as easily so the numbers are always the same, they can be predicted. Same with Bashir- he can feign incompetence but he can’t feign a stamina drop off that doesn’t exist. Whatever numbers he starts with, that’s where he’ll finish.

Jack blinks a few times then smiles wide, dropping the racquet because he has the Solution to the Problem and people like solutions!

“What are you talking about?” O’Brien asks, and Jack is about to tell him when he looks up at Bashir. Jack’s eyes narrow - of course Bashir is suspicious of everything he does!- but he still smiles. Beating Bashir, making O'Brien into his Liza Doolitle. This… this could be fun actually actually. Jack keeps grinning, biting his finger - alright, back to 0 seconds without biting it- arms crossed as he sways back and forth on the balls of his feet. It’s the Martians dead amongst the red weed yes! 

“Slain, after all man’s devices had failed by the humblest things,” Jack mumbles with a short laugh before grabbing O’Brien’s arm enthusiastically. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t remember to be Careful and he catches sight of a wince, the memory of so many dreams, so many nightmares of everything he touches crumbling beneath his fingers making him nauseous. Jack immediately lets go.

“Christ, gonna break my arm too?” he hears low from O'Brien under his breath, the “not meant to be heard” low, and Jack doesn’t realize what culmination of perceived slights that O'Brien is adding up but-  _ “No one wants to be reminded they’re less, Jack.” _ that echo in his head is from Sarina, from the rare and radiant maiden who the angels named Lenore. Oh. Right… that… that “better” thing.

This… this is beyond “sorry” then…

Jack takes a deep breath and lifts his finger, not knowing how to explain what he means, wishing Lauren was here to talk for him because there are Things like this that get stuck in his throat, and he could ramble around the rock without ever speaking of the rock because he can’t… can’t say those words because his ribcage is shrinking- No! That’s not satisfactory! He  _ can _ parse those indexed words perfectly ordered in his mind, and find the right ones. They’re not his, never his not originally but if he’s the one speaking them then… then as far as Jack is concerned they are.

“I am he who knew what it was to be evil…” Jack begins, staring hard at the sweatshirt oddly identical to his own, “was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant…” his voice is tight but steady as he speaks, swallowing, mouth dry, the racquet under his arm held tight as his hand starts to shake. “You… you can do it any time hmhm, any time you can… m-make a…“ Jack touches his two fingers together quickly to demonstrate before anxiously starting to bite his the left,  _ dammit  _ Language Jack! _.  _ “Whenever you want to forgive me you can tap it hmhm or not I don’t care. Forget it! I don’t need anyone to-” Stop it there shuttup, shuttup Jack!

Silence.

This was a Bad idea, he thinks, about to drop his hand when he feels a little smack, to that digit, followed by a sigh, and a roll of eyes from O’Brien.

“…Swear between you and him yer both gonna drive me to an early grave,” O’Brien says before leaning in, a look to Bashir first, something there that Jack missed earlier but- “So,” O'Brien asks as Bashir… gets up to leave? “Are you gonna show me how to beat Mr. Genetically Enhanced there or not?”

 


	19. Companion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief moment in the burgeoning friendship of Jack and Miles.

“You’re not crazy,” Miles (Miles now, not O’Brien, he said) declares. making another adjustment, holding his hand out, “you’re just annoying like Julian.” Jack hands him the flux coupler then quickly returns his attention to the screen. 

“I’m not like Bashir, nothing like Bashir,” Jack answers tersely, fixated on the blocks as they drop drop, faster, his hands moving fast to keep up. They said the game cannot be won, there’s no end- it just goes faster and faster until death but Jack… likes that, likes watching the colors fall and blink and disappear and it keeps him from putting his fingers in his mouth, it keeps him mostly still because his hands are moving and his legs don’t feel as restless.

 

“Stand by you both being annoying,” Miles answers making Jack’s head snap up seeing the smile- Teasing, he can do teasing - and he smiles back. 

“But the look on his face when you beat him hm that was good - priceless - should be framed in the bar mmhm,” Jack glances back down at the screen. He made sure to thank Miles for the game- itself thanks for helping slay the Julian dragon -even after being told if he was so smart maybe he could beat the unbeatable game and Jack took that Challenge Accepted!

 

He said to Bashir that he likes Miles, that Miles is uncomplicated but now he  _ understands _ that’s one of those things that wasn’t said Right so he sat down with Sarina over the vid screen while she helped him rewrite all the Problematic Things to Good Things. So “uncomplicated” became “not an asshole” (Language! Language! Patrick always cries. But somehow Miles had just laughed at that) and Miles doesn’t seem to mind him hanging around handing him things and listening for those undetectable noises.

“Maybe if Quark wouldn’t charge a mint,” Miles agrees giving two taps to the bulkhead so Jack knows that he needs silence and Jack needs to focus on level 28 anyway because level 29 used to be known as a kill screen until the processors were modded - like him, he thinks - so now it can go infinitely faster.

 

This is Good. This is relaxing.

 

Jack leans back fingers flying, waiting to hear the three taps for him to talk again because maybe… maybe Miles knows why the Trill, why the counselor read his file when she wasn’t supposed to and why… why so many people are still so… so afraid of him. He hears the three taps a moment later as level twenty nine kicks in and he gives two taps of his own and wishes he could just take the game everywhere with him except that would be Rude and- And he reaches level thirty a moment later, a sudden sound breaking his focus and sending the screen blurring out. He hears Miles swearing loudly and Jack looks up, pointing to the screen, finding a laugh starting to bubble out of him from nowhere.

 

“Ditto.”

 


	20. Understand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An altercation at lunch leads Jack and Julian to understand each other a little better

“Why do you have a fork and a knife? You’re not supposed to eat it with a fork, you’re suppose to use your hands.” Jack watches Bashir stop with the utensils and look at him, wondering why he looks sick, wondering why Miles is looking at him weird like he just said something Wrong.

“You know, Jack, not everything is right or wrong, correct or incorrect. Some things are just  _ different _ .”

“I know that. You think I don’t don’t know that hm? I know that but it’s a New York style pizza and you’re supposed to fold the slice and I can show you if you don’t understand but you should you  _ should  _ understand so-”

 

Bashir slaps his hands away.

“So this is how I’m eating it and while I’m very  _ thankful _ , I’m going to eat it the way I please.” Bashir says “thank you” which is good because Jack was always taught that please and thank you were the Correct way to behave in a civilized society because they weren’t  _ animals _ , they weren’t creatures, they weren’t the rabble who rioted in the slums, they weren’t the ones who were slaves because of the Eugenics Wars they survived they survived because their tooth-stone-arrow-gun-shy minds turned and abolished all. He doesn’t Understand why Bashir doesn’t  _ understand _ these things when he’s supposed to be so smart, same as him, Same as him and it’s Loud in his head, the old man shrieking at him as he looks down from the red oak still standing, the only one still standing like him like him.

 

“What are you doing?!” Fast, blink quick he grabs it, faster than Bashir, better than Bashir so… so should he be protecting? Looking out? The sentry eyes blown out, blown to pieces, left to rot in the trenches, Jack bending both utensils before throwing them across the room like those live grenades waiting for the Boom when Bashir stands up angrily, fists on the table, Miles muttering “Jesus” staring off and Jack knows they’re thinking dangerous dangerous the air raid sirens going off as Jack yells back that he was saving his life so he can be Grateful because doing things the Wrong Way are what get you killed!

 

“See this is why people think that you’re a bloody lunatic!”

“I’m not  _ not  _ crazy!”

“You think that  _ normal _ people just throw forks and knives across the room like that?!”

“Do you think that normal people just throw forks and knives across the room like that?” Jack answers mocking him, both of them standing up and they never thank him never ever thank him. “If you’re doing it _wrong_ it needs to be corrected because because if you don’t do it Correct then it _hurts_ and why do people why do you do you _not_ understand that?!”  
“You don’t think I don’t understand being punished for not doing shit the bloody right way?! Is that is Jack?!” Nose to nose, Bashir isn’t backing down tall tall slenderman and Jack backs up hopping back on the chair because the only time it’s safe is when he’s higher and- “Why do you think I eat the damn thing that way to begin with?!”

 

Jack stops, just short of kicking the table over loud, agitated, but but trying hard to think and understand and  _ try _ and there’s something in Bashir’s words that ring ring recollected in his brain as he crosses his arm cold and nauseous as he bites his finger, Miles off, shaking his head, retrieving the instruments of destruction talking to security as Jack and Bashir look at each other and Jack swallows, tasting blood because he bit too hard as he licks iron from his mouth, taking a shuddering breath whispering all eyes on him eyes watching so hard that he wants to sink in the floor away from the ill angels but.

 

“If… if you’re not going to listen… then…”

“Then why’d I pay all that money?” Bashir answers, stepping back, both of them looking at each other a long time before Jack slowly slips down and back into his seat as Miles returns.

 

_ “God, you and Julian… you really have no idea how alike you are…” _

 


	21. Seek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack passes a few hours amicably with Garak in his shop.

“They’re fighting.”

“I disagree. They’re clearly flirting.”

“Of course you’d say that. It’s Cardassian bias hm. You’re not… not considering that Ferengi have different body language, different postures. See Ferengi don’t tilt their heads coyly, they’re not showing neck that’s the ears like… like ‘did I hear you correctly’ like anger mmhmmmhmmhm.” Jack ducks back through the door, only having looked up at the sound, at Garak’s voice questioning, asking his thoughts on the matter. He knows that Garak is only engaging him in Conversation at Bashir’s request because Garak doesn’t like him, doesn’t like some feeling or some scenting thing that he gets from him but that’s fine because Jack doesn’t particularly like the Cardassian (the Morlock!) either.

 

“I assure you that as many years as I’ve… enjoyed the pleasure of occupying this real estate I’ve had plenty of opportunity to familiarize myself with the Ferengi prior to the Federations arrival.” Jack pokes his head out again because Garak says a lot and much of it Pointless, but there’s a certain Tone that he affects when he’s about to say something useful so Jack gives his attention remembering that Bashir says that Garak can’t be believed to say if the sun will rise the next day (which makes no sense to Jack because where they’re currently situated the sun hardly rises as such but even if it did it would be stupid to rely on the word of an untrained observer for something involving astronomical constants. Bashir asked if he was kidding when he said that and Jack had no idea why that would be considered a joke.)   
  


“While Quark may have his more benevolent moments, he is still a Ferengi and the heart of his operation is still profit,” Garak continues pedantically. Jack is about to tell him that he knows that and it’s obvious but he reminds himself- or rather reminds himself that Sarina reminded him that’s a Filler Sentence for basics no no Improper word… non genetically enhanced individuals so he crosses his arms, biting his finger instead silent reminder as he listens. He catches a flick of Garak’s eyes like he deliberately paused just to test him which is… weird but Garak is always testing him for something for some reason and Jack is always… pleased when he passes.

 

“So the cheapest labor one can hire is the young unestablished men you see working there currently. Some of them like Prell have just arrived from Ferenginar but the two gentlemen in question were hired when the station was still occupied by its previous occupants shall we say. I’ve noticed curiously, that during those formative years some employees like Mr. Lat and Mr. Resk have unconsciously adopted a lot of Cardassian mannerisms, such as that tilt of the head and that penchant for heated conversation to further along interpersonal relationships.” Jack looks again, looking closer, blinking, taking that in, filing it away because there so much that he still doesn’t Understand. It’s… it’s a lifetime of catching up and at times like this it almost seems like it’s Too Much and it’s difficult to breath but-

 

“I knew that,” he mumbles automatically and Garak smiles not believing him for a moment. One liar to another, though Jack doesn’t lie which makes Garak tell him glibly that’s why he’s one of the best liars of them all but-

 

“What about them over there?” he asks stepping out further into the light, having already completed the count of bolts anyway.

“Tell me what you think,” Garak says offhanded that smile growing as he idly sketches on a paper behind the counter, “And I’ll tell you why you’re mistaken.”

“Ha! You’re on!”

 


	22. Restless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's insomnia explored

Jack has never understood the silence of night. Or rather, he’s never understood why it’s described as silent when there’s still as much noise as the daytime. It’s different noise, but it’s still noise, only it’s the hum of the station no longer drowned out by the sound of motion, speech, by the other people sounds that he normally hears. Sometimes he listens to music, but there’s only so much of it that he can stand before it’s Too Much and then he’s back to the hum and the sound of his own breathing. But the station is better than the Institute because at least here he doesn’t have to pretend- they’re not watching him, no cameras no laying in bed still, breathing slowly so they don’t need to use the hypospray to force him to sleep.

 

Jack catches sleep like butterflies in a net, running, running until his body stops, a wind up bird slowing slowing until he crashes to the earth. He can feel himself fade, feel everything slow, the world spinning just long enough for him to blink, blink and fight that small death with every blink until he can find a small space to sit, forehead pillowed on his knees and close his eyes.  _ “There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping, Death took him by the heart.” _ He thinks that as he slips off, always remembering how the pale shade that never said “mother”, the pale Mary, the virgin who surely never gave birth to him, would say softly  _ “now I lay me down to sleep...”  _ before placing a cold hand to his shoulder, drifting from the side of his bed, and he whispers that prayer to the Thing that he no longer prays to every time he feels his eyes falling shut.

 

When he was younger, he wondered in those rare religious (stupid, Stupid!) moments what he had done to deserve that painful torment during the one time that he could ever Escape. Netta had deduced after a time it was likely his enhancements causing what should be otherwise Standard Procedural Functions to be Unpleasant. She wrote up a brief for the old man who dismissed it out of hand because the Old Man was the all seeing eye who said he’d Be Silent or Be Sedated so Jack… Jack stopped sleeping and he didn’t understand what the old man hired him an Attorney for if not to provide counsel but… but that was that, and he stopped sleeping and the Pain made it stop  _ Doing That  _ when he was awake, and they didn’t sedate him.

 

He learned in The Institute that sedation only trapped him in paralysis while the serpent twitched and throbbed and felt like it would explode out of his skin in fire and melt molten down his thighs, the rest of his body hypersensitive, every shift making his clothes scratch until he wanted to crawl clear out of his skin. Voices in him saying if he were a Man he would take a stick and break him now and finish him off and every time he told them that they merely said it was in his head, that it was a dream and there was no Harm to him. So he learned to feign sleep and learned that he had… that he had little desire for that primitive Pointless function anyway, content to rest his head on Sarina’s shoulder and close his eyes for fifteen, twenty minutes until she’d shake him awake.

 

The Trill asked him about his dreams which was stupid and he said as much because he didn’t dream in the literal sense and in the metaphoric sense dreams meant little more than dust blown away, the old man said, and if Dreams could be killed by even the gentle West Wind then they were Useless. She said that sleep was the restorative state and that it was  _ necessary _ to function no matter how godlike he imagined himself. An hour, she suggested, try an hour, only an hour, only an hour with the venom dripping on him and was she going to hold the basin until it overflowed?! She asked him if there was anyone that he trusted to hold the basin if not her (no, not her not her, she Read the File and couldn’t be trusted!) and so he he…

 

Jack shuffles into the Infirmary when he feels the blink of sleep, seeing the Bajoran leave, seeing the flicker of eyes at him as his own fall down heavy and he looks at Bashir as the world falls down and the blackness swirling in his vision grows to half and half and he tells him that he needs to sleep. Not long, just an hour and if the snake starts to stir he’s to wake him or cut off its head like Nagini to which Bashir says Stupidly that he’s not going to mutilate him over an involuntary biological function and he shouldn’t worry about it because Bashir just doesn’t Understand that it’s more than that, it’s… it’s

“Are you sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable in your room?” he hears as he falls against him, everything failing at once.

_...and keep me safe till morning’s light. _

 


	23. Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Molly watch the cranes fly.

"They’re gonna fly? All of them?" Molly looks over from where they’re both crouched down on the second level of the Promenade. Jack nods, excited, teeth digging into his index finger. It should work, no no it  _ will  _ work. He calculated. He checked and  double checked and he was positive that everything was Correct, Molly helping him place all the pieces over the last few days obscured, obfuscated to escape detection until it was all in place and the timer, the birds flying high passed one by one for every second moving. 

 

Molly found all the timers counting in his head fascinating and even drew a picture of of the one for the birds.

 

Jack drew one too, sure that every one of the dozen was distinct, unique, Miles having the Nerve to look at his and clap him on the shoulder and say "good try" and then turn around and wonder why he thought Molly was better company. Well not "better" but "different" Jack was learning, not Correct but Different after that mess with the pizza (and maybe maybe it was less messy with a fork and knife but it still felt weird, and Jack still didn't get it but he shut up, held his tongue, stifled quiet. Good. Good on him, Progress, as they would say!)

 

Molly is a good listener and doesn't ask Stupid Pointless questions and understands absolutely that if the frog is on the left when piloting an imaginary ship there’s an Important reason for it. Much more imagination too, finally someone understanding the Counters and Time (and always good about waking him up with a loud whisper of "Jack!" when he needs to sleep.) 

 

Molly also helped him fold the last of the cranes very seriously.

 

She knew the crane story too which was very Good because he didn't have to tell her that one and she had finally helped him decide the incredibly Important wish though both of them are sworn to secrecy because it wouldn't come true otherwise.

 

He nearly holds his breath as the launch nears and okay maybe he had to fiddle with the air control systems and maybe they had to get creative but-

 

"Jack, they’re flying!" 

 

Molly jumps up as the light fibers dissolve, as the nets fall away, the delicate paper birds taking flight like a swarm of white butterflies dancing through the air. He hears a few gasps, screams, Ignorant people who don't Understand anything as both he and Molly stand up, shouting,  Jack closing his eyes tightly for a few wistful wishing seconds before they snap open at the Changeling’s irritated grunts, but wish made, so the slimy Sentry can only howl in fury as Jack exchanges looks with his very Essential assistant and takes off running.

 

Molly isn’t as quick as Jack - shorter legs but he doesn't see why she couldn’t be as quick as him if she grows into them, a child still growing, still potential, still as yet undiscovered gifts - but she will be he says so for now he carries her running, dodging, while she leads them "the best hiding" spot passed down a generation so far inherited mischief and  he sits back in the dark finger to his lips to be quiet while the danger passes and Bashir comes before too long with a shake of his head, telling them both they’re going to have to clean all the paper up. 

 

Well that’s… fair though Jack thinks that Bashir ought to help too, having folded half, having looked the other way and Bashir asks what he wished for after all and Jack says wouldn't he like to know and.... and Jack is about to snap something else back when Molly tells Bashir Very Seriously (because it’s really so simple!) that he can’t do that or else it won’t come true.

 

"Oh, I see," says Bashir as if he had to hear it from someone who wasn't Jack before he Understood. "Well, whatever it is, I hope it comes true." Jack sighs, arms crossed, the darkness giving way to the light of the Promenade, a landscape of paper snow, and a stony Sentry slime. He salutes, Molly salutes and Bashir… also salutes, a shrug of his shoulders looking at Jack and Jack… 

 

Jack wonders if that unspoken wish might come true after all.

 


	24. Haze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack doesn't understand the appeal of kissing Julian, so he decides to find out for himself.

He’s quiet, so quiet, the practiced inappropriate shoes off quiet that lets him walk behind Bashir unheard. Bashir is concentrating so he doesn’t hear him and Jack swallows the closer he gets, the softer he breathes, watching Bashir concentrating on the screen above. Jack doesn’t look at it because if he looks then he’ll be distracted by the Problem and this is… something tells him it’s important and that he has to know so he can’t afford the distraction. He wants to know, he  _ needs _ to know what is that Sarina had-

 

Jack catches his face in profile, just a moment that he studies unnoticed, the dark light making hazel eyes look green, the curve of his neck, the too big forehead, the nostrils that could suck in the world, skinny, stupid shoulders, and those lips, parted in concentration wet, he sees that and surely that’s it, the mouth, his achilles heel but… but he can do this, so he steps counting nine… eight… seven… still silent, seeing Bashir turning at three… two “Jack?” one…

 

Brow furrowed in confusion, Jack stops, forcing his finger away from his mouth, blinking too many times but it makes Bashir lean in, head turned good, Good angle, Jack thinks.

“I need to know,” he mumbles, breathing deeply again though it’s starting not to work. It’s the mouth, it’s definitely the mouth, and Jack frowns, not liking this, but knowing if he’s fast enough then he won’t… probably… bite. “What it’s like… why she… love at the lips was touch as sweet as I could bear,” he whispers seeing Bashir even more confused, but holding his place as Jack circles uncertain.

 

“Robert Frost,” Bashir says again like rote, and that’s when Jack kisses him.

 

Just a peck, just a press, a beat before he can anxiously nip, and he pulls back thinking that it was little different than his mouth on his finger. Except his finger doesn’t look at him stupidly and grab for his arm when he jumps back, grabbing air. That was nothing, that was stupid, except it looks like far more to Bashir who keeps… staring.

“Jack?” he asks after a swallow. “Em… why did you-”

“It was nothing! It was stupid and Pointless and it doesn’t explain anything!”

“I’m… sorry?”

“She wanted to kiss you. She likes kissing you and it doesn’t make any sense because there’s nothing special about your mouth or your face or anything about you that fascinating. Kissing you was an exercise in futility and it was Pointless.”

 

“Well I’d imagine you’d feel different if you were kissing someone you were attracted to.” Bashir shakes his head, surely another stupid “Crazy Jack” moment and it Irritates him because Bashir knows just as little about Jack than he did about Jack and Sarina.

“No,” he says flatly, arm cradled in his hand, counting lines on the floor a second. “I wouldn’t. It doesn’t work that way for me because  _ some _ of us have evolved past all that!” Bashir turns at that, the sanctimonious pique that keeps Irritating him.

 

“I’m pleased for you then. I’m sorry, I really should be getting back to this-” because Bashir is always looking down in him, always better always smug.

“You’re not sorry,” Jack clips and Bashir finally looks human and not machine spitting platitudes at him.

“You’re right. I’m not sorry. I don’t know what you want from me. Obviously S-sarina and I didn’t kiss like that and I’m sure Miles could always use a hand-”

“Why can’t you explain it? Are you embarrassed? That terrible, the doctor can’t talk about simple preliminaries to sexual reproduction hmhm?”

“For god’s sake do you want me to bloody show you?!”

 

Jack blinks and blinks again about to snap no when Bashir is already shaking his head taking a breath because Jack is  _ exasperating _ him.

“Forget it, I don’t even know why I-”

“I’d bite you,” Jack mumbles not looking at him. “I can’t... Control that sometimes… things near my mouth so you’re better off not… not doing that.” Curious look from the corner of his eye and Jack sees that curiosity, that Bashir face when he’s considering a Problem. 

“Not… terribly hard?” Bashir asks which is a Weird thing to ask but Jack doesn’t… think it would be any harder than he bites his fingers, he thinks looking at the reddened digit silently.

 

“Not hard.” He says quieter, not sure why his heart is starting to race and he’s starting to feel sick. It’s not a pleasant feeling but he tamps it down, that anxiety making the room start to blur, which isn’t helping because Bashir is moving towards him like he’s a rabid animal. “Are you… going to show me?”

“If that’s… alright?” Bashir asks looking as if he hopes the answer is no so Jack says yes just to spite him. Deep breath, deep breath, deep dive into consciousness. “Right well… your arms are going to have to-”

“I know that! I don’t need you to tell me that.” Jack’s arms drop down by his sides stiff, straight, trying to be still with the buzz and the hum.

 

“Okay sure, just… stay there like that and if you ah… bite that’s fine it’ll just be a… count of thirty?”

“Thirty?!” 

“Twenty?”

“Thirty is fine!” He can do that, he can do this.

“Right right just… keep your arms there.” Bashir’s hands fall to his shoulders starting to move up his face, fingers long, spidery but… warm as they lightly skim his jawline, Bashir telling him to close his eyes so Jack asks why, so Bashir snaps that he can leave them open he doesn’t care so Jack closes them nervous because he can’t see, only feel Bashir’s breath closer to his face - honey and a mint he notices wondering if Bashir just keeps pocketfuls of mints in case he finds people he wants to kiss. “Bashir is a ho’,” he hears some of them whisper.

 

And then Bashir is kissing him.

 

Jack nearly jolts back at the touch of lips to his and his jaw is clenched, hands clenched, nails digging half moons into his palms as Bashir’s mouth opens making Jack thinks he’s decided to bite him first so he’s faster, moving forward, biting - not hard because he’s not an  _ animal _ nothing more than a nip- hearing a hiss which satisfies him until Bashir holds his face like he’s about to give CPR, slowly open close but a bite with lips not teeth, and Jack still doesn’t understand what on Earth the deal is but… it’s not Unpleasant. It’s nothing he can’t copy. 

 

He can keep counting thirty and match those weird little movements until his mouth feels dry and he calms down enough to lick, to unclench his fistss, relieved that it’s nothing more than just two body parts moving together, two wet ones when Bashir’s tongue taps back to his and he tastes that mint - not a big mint fan but it’s tolerable - counting ten seconds down, moving his arms because Bashir is  _ warm _ like a furnace and Jack likes the warmth of his body, likes the warm mouth, the warm breaths and he lets his hands rest on Bashir’s hips, hearing a gasp when he settles bodily closer. 

 

Ah! More of that warm, more wet, those lazy languid motions soothing, relaxing though his ears detect the heavier beats of Bashir’s pulse, feels the heavier breaths, panting to his, Bashir’s fingers moving away from his face to his hair holding his head and if Bashir is going to make a contest out of this, then Jack can match him, fingers digging harder into hips, pressing harder to him, the grip in his scalp tightening, a groan thrummed to his lips, out of Bashir’s throat which sound odd, feels like a funny vibration but Jack gets the sensation of sinking into a warm bath, that heats up hotter until he thinks he might pass out in a nice haze of sleep.

 

People drown in the bathtub! Everyone knows that but this isn’t a real tub, it’s warm hot breathing and Bashir angling his head tasting him, giving a few more bites of his own causing Jack to bite back, thinking they’re going past the count now but not minding because he’s… never been so close to another person like this warm, hot, the body pressed to his flushed and heating rapidly, Jack feeling the swell of Bashir’s groin against his with that distant awareness that for people who aren’t him (and even some people like him) it’s not an Unpleasant sensation. For him it’s too much, too intense, the nerves too sensitive but he can feel Bashir more insistently pressing against him, and it’s… funny to see the high and mighty Bashir need something like that from him so badly but-

 

But that warmth is addictive, and the more they exert, the more his heart races, not in the same way as Bashir’s but the same as running across the long stretches of plains in the holosuite alive and breathing, only breathing against Bashir who’s backed him up to the bed in the Infirmary, pressing, pressing, that bulge swelling larger until Bashir’s hands start faltering, he turns his head a moment from Jack’s pursuant mouth moan, shiver, eyes shut, panting and whimpering and Jack has never been so fascinated by a sight in his life. 

“Jack,” comes out as a breath that still makes a crack in Bashir’s voice. Bashir’s hips feel nice beneath his fingers, Jack thinks, experimentally moving them around to the rear. Soft, softer than he would’ve imagined actually as little flesh seems to be there at a visual inspection, and he nips at the corner of Bashir’s mouth hearing another one of those Interesting noises.

“Jack… S-stop… god please I… we have to stop.”

“Why? You don’t like it? Am I doing something-”

“No, god god you can feel how much I like it, can’t you?”

 

“Well obviously,” and obviously if the roles were reversed he wouldn’t call it “good” but Bashir is flushed and panting and Jack thinks that he… understands why Sarina enjoyed this so much as he looks into those fogged eyes and feels strangely exhilarated at the slight red around Bashir’s puffy lips, parted with those breaths, and he wants to see what else he can make him do. Will he moan louder? Will he whimper, cry out?  _ Say my name like he did just now? _ Odd unsettling thoughts and maybe he should take some time to think about… whatever this is except-

“Are you… alright with what just happened? I mean I… at least from the physiological reaction I wouldn’t think you er… enjoyed it quite the same but I hope it wasn’t… bad?” Hopeful, very vulnerable look that Jack hasn’t caught before. Bashir and his stupid ego but Jack doesn’t lie so-

“You think I didn’t like it because I don’t have an erection?” he asks because that’s such a stupid assumption but one he could see Bashir making. Cinnamon ice cream doesn’t give him an erection either, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t one of his favorite things to eat and one of his favorite things in the world.. Maybe that’s what Bashir was like… not ice cream, not cold but like a hot apple cider and ginger snaps.

 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be assuming things.”

“You shouldn’t. You look like an idiot and I… I l-liked that a lot.” Everything about it if he’s being honest. “I liked that a lot and and I… understand why you and Sarina…” he trails off because there’s being honest and then there’s saying things he doesn’t particularly want to say and Bashir is still standing there pressed against him though not as urgently and he… doesn’t want him to move when he’s so warm. He sees a sigh, a slump of shoulders like Bashir is just realizing something himself, a lick of lips that Jack really wants to kiss again.

“Sarina and I didn’t kiss quite like that,” Bashir says, his fingers trailing down Jack’s neck, his chest, until Bashir’s hands are planted on the bed, and he’s leaning in bringing their foreheads together.

 

Jack is about to ask what the point was if it wasn’t the same when he Understands what Bashir meant by that. 

 

Oh. 

 

Bashir is pressing lips to his again in spite of his earlier desire to stop.

 

Jack kisses him back.

 

He thinks he could kiss Julian forever.


	25. Play

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look at Jack's newfound kissing game from Julian's perspective.

_ “Can I… kiss you like this?...any time like this?” _ Julian is sure that Jack didn’t understand the cruelty of asking a question like that when Julian was breathing heavy into his shoulder, hands shaking, legs trembling, trying to will himself to calm down with Jack’s mouth still on his neck. Jack’s breath in his ear had made him shiver, Jack nipping the helix, teeth grazing the scaphoid fossa, Julian’s eyes fluttering, nearly missing the question when Jack asked again and he had just rushed out  _ “yesyesplease” _ toes curling in his shoes.

 

He hadn’t thought much of it once Jack had left and he was finally able to meditate a moment and get back to work, seeing the rest of his patients for the day. He thought that Jack might forget, pushing that mad experiment out of his mind, the same as Julian had done by the time dinner had rolled around. But then Jack had appeared in the replimat, standing over the table where Julian and Ezri were sitting, arms crossed, staring down looking between them telling Julian that he needed to speak with him a moment giving a stunted wave and jerk of his head to Ezri.

 

Excusing himself, Julian had thought it might be serious, Jack looking anxiously over his shoulder. Jack had increasingly fewer incidents, things that needed to be smoothed over, actually spending an odd amount of time with Miles or hanging in Ziw’s old antiquities place, or writing some manifesto that he absolutely refused to show Julian. He looked nervous, looked uneasy - which wasn’t a good sign - his eyes darting from the near empty replimat at the late hour to Julian’s… mouth. There was something about the way the his eyes focused that was so intense that it automatically made Julian feel exposed and hot.

“Ah… Jack?” he began, having an odd feeling just then-

 

“Do you have any mints?” Jack asked, Julian automatically taking the small roll from his pocket.

“Yes, did you want one?” Julian asked confused, Jack nodding, taking it before dropping it and stomping it on the floor with a satisfied grin.

“What did you do that for?!”

“I don’t like mint.”

“Alright, but you can’t just destroy other people’s things because you don’t like-” that angry protest cut off when Jack’s hand moved to the back of his head, pulling Julian’s head down, bringing their mouths together so suddenly that Julian could only gasp. Unlike Julian, Jack never felt the need to hide his physical ability, content to move as quick as a blink when it suited him, Julian still acclimating to such sudden movements.

 

Jack tasted like cinnamon candy, a little spicy, tongue warm, wet, a quick tilt of his head bringing that kiss deeper, other hand falling to the small of Julian’s back urging him closer. Jack stepped back, back hitting the wall, inviting Julian to press against him with a soft moan to Julian’s mouth of how warm he was. Julian was about to tell him what an absolutely terrible idea this was even half obscured by the faint jut of the wall except- except that tug of Jack’s teeth to his lip followed by a lick, the fingers threading through his hair holding him, even the soft scrape of Jack’s mustache was making him groan softly, his body remembering vividly that unsatisfied arousal from earlier.

 

Jack wasn’t as hesitant as earlier either, tugging Julian against him, mouth on his jaw, fingers kneading at his scalp before those lips moved back to Julian’s, his tongue slipping wet inside Julian’s parted lips, licking at teeth, twirling around his tongue, Julian’s heavy breathing making that kiss wetter.  _ Godgod this is a terrible idea, _ Julian thought as he could feel his cock stirring against Jack, Julian’s hands waking up moving to Jack’s shoulders to push off and tell him they couldn’t do this here in public like this. But that’s when he heard Jack whispering against him mouth  _ “you’re getting hard, goodgood I like that…”  _ Sounding so pleased with himself but… Julian couldn’t blame him.

 

Julian wasn’t lying when he said he never kissed Sarina like this. The kisses they shared were sweet, tender, the press of his mouth to someone inexperienced and wide eyed. Jack too had never done that before, or rather he’d never done it before that time in the Infirmary, but there was no hesitation, no holding back, only a relentless exploration of his mouth, of his teeth to Julian’s pulse, a curious questing machine drinking in Julian’s every response, adjusting slightly to every stutter of Julian’s breath, pulling Julian so deeply into him that Julian could sink, could melt. He’d never felt someone pulling at him so desperately but at the same time not… not reacting in the manner that he was accustomed.

 

Julian didn’t understand what Jack liked, what Jack wanted, or why he was so determined to make Julian whimper, Jack’s thigh pressing forward, Julian grinding against it as Jack bit his shoulder making him shiver, followed by another bite, another hard suck of skin, Julian unsure of where his hands should be or what they ought to be doing since Jack seemed to have little regard on his own end for any sort of sexual gratification. So Julian just kept his hands on Jack’s hips wondering, crazily wondering, what it would feel like feeling Jack’s skin against him instead of three layers of sweater.

_ “Good that’s good… warm… nice… do you like that?” _ Jack asked in a rush to which Julian could only nod and pray that he didn’t come in his pants.

 

He’s sure the only reason he hadn’t was because Ezri had broken them up managing to radiate concern as Jack practically disappeared into thin air.

 

Ezri had suggested that after Sarina, getting involved with Jack wasn’t the best idea, perhaps caching it in slightly stronger terms than that. Miles had given him another talking to as well, oddly protective of Jack which was both a little hurtful but also… heartening to see that Jack was making so many new relationships with people. Julian really didn’t know what to tell them except to explain that it was some weird game of Jack’s but that he would absolutely bring it under control before it got out of hand. He wasn’t sure how to even process it himself, the two of them not romantically involved, Jack just as mercurial as ever with him except…

 

Except perhaps maybe he wasn’t when they were reading, or when Jack found another puzzle that he wanted to share with him or another Problem he was eager to dissect. Perhaps Jack might have stopped calling him Bashir and started calling him Julian. Perhaps it was also just in his mind that he thought Jack was staring at his mouth, at his neck, other parts of his body. Or perhaps it was because he started thinking about Jack, about Jack’s mouth, Jack’s eyes intently peering into his, Jack’s hands, his thighs, his hips. Perhaps it was because the more Jack played this little game - much more careful now to be quicker about it, more discreet - the more Julian thought about him when he’d have some frustrating shower masturbation session.

 

The more Julian dreamed about him.

 

It was strange because there were so many blanks that Julian’s mind had to fill in, but every time he dreamed of Jack it never mattered. His mind supplied the shape, Jack on his bed underneath him, whispering with reverence how warm he was, both their bodies hot fevered slipping sweaty against the other. And just like those impromptu encounters on the station, it was Jack’s soft cock that he pushed against, his brain happy to fill in every greedy accurate detail that it could. Only in his dreams he could keep pushing (realizing later that he was just rutting against the mattress to his embarrassment) until he came, hearing the rushed of Jack’s low voice to his ear telling him  _ “Goodgood that’s so nice…”  _ With that little bit of wonder each time that he said it like he couldn’t believe he was the one driving Julian so wild.

 

Sometimes Julian finds those images invading his waking hours in the form of vivid daydreams. Nurse Girani or Jabara giving him a reproving cluck of the tongue when his eyes blank out just a moment; usually after Jack drops by with a copy of another book he’s reading or another idea that he wants Julian to consider or even the occasional update on his case now that they had actually located the woman who confirmed unequivocally with a look that there was no way on god’s green paradise that the man in front of her was anything other than her Jackie. 

 

Jack doesn’t kiss him in the Infirmary any longer, not like that at least. A few times he’s stopped before leaving, looking at Julian uncertainly until Julian finally tells him that not every kiss needs to morph to some torrid face fucking.

 

And then Jack starts taking his hand before he leaves with just a small nip to the corner of his mouth and a mumbled “bye”.

 

Julian has no idea what’s going on but he’s equally terrified to ask.

 

All he knows is, as he wakes up another morning with sticky underwear, that it’s driving him crazy and he has no idea what to do about it.


	26. Knowledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Julian race and Jack really starts to understand him.

Jack meets Julian one morning in the holosuites, on a Vulcan hiking trail. The program was a gift from the Bolian who owned the junk shop (full of artifacts and books, god the books!). The Bolian said it was a worthless thing- the higher gravity of the program making it unusable for most of his customers- and he was more interested in bubblegum anyway which was fine by Jack because they made a good trade of chewing gum for cinnamon sticks and the program. Jack loves the program. The mountain passes are unforgiving, the terrain hot,  _ stifling _ , but it’s Perfect to him. The gravity is a  _ challenge _ and there are mornings where he feels he could run forever or just… lay back exhausted and look up at the red sky from the shade of one of the cliff faces.

 

He… wanted to share this with Julian. Not just the landscape at, not just the quiet, but a world where they could be everything they were meant to be without restriction. He asked Julian why he never thought about Vulcan if he was so determined to drown in a sea unnoticed as any other wave. But there was just a look from Julian, a Serious face soon broken with a curve of his lips asking if Jack could  _ really _ see him on Vulcan and… and Jack had laughed because it was so absurd! Jack had laughed maybe harder than he ever had at anything every picture of Julian trying to Adapt, the images coming one after another until he was on his knees trying to breathe he was laughing so hard and it… it was so Good that he still smiled thinking about it. 

 

“I still don’t understand why you like this so much. Maybe I’ve been on the station too long but it’s just so  _ hot _ . You’d be better off bringing Garak here. He’d probably love you for it.”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t like many people. He just doesn’t respect them enough to be honest about it and still I think he’s quite fond of you on some level.” Jack pauses at that. Oh. That’s different then, he decides, looking out over the valley ahead of them. He isn’t quite sure how to… how to put into words. He never is- never his own words anyway. “The holy time is quiet as a Nun. Breathless with adoration, the broad sink is sinking down in its tranquility.” 

“William Wordsworth. You’ll ah… go easy on me, won’t you?”

 

Jack looks at him long, measured, knowing it’s a joke, knowing it’s just one of those things people say, and he hates “one of those things” because they can’t be argued and arguing jokes and throway statements without meaning is part of what makes him Crazy but-

“I’m just kidding, Jack,” Julian says softly and he… doesn’t look annoyed or irritated so… so Jack takes stock of his Tone before answering too sharply, trying,  _ trying _ always trying and sometimes he thinks it was easier when he wasn’t.

“I know that,” he says sure it’s still too terse but-

“But?” Julian asks and Jack doesn’t know why he couldn’t be this tolerable months ago. Jack likes this. Maybe he should’ve kissed him sooner? Maybe he should’ve… tried harder that first night.

 

Jack looks down, absently playing with the zipper - hardly any better than biting his finger - as he considers so many things, considered the mind deserting the body it has used fly away, fly away, staring hard at the clothes he wore today. He’s wearing black leggings, running shoes, and a sleeveless zip up thing that leaves him so exposed, so vulnerable, such a miserable awful thing if it were anyone there but Julian, he realizes. He breathes, the air making it easier as he looks at Julian and looks at the steep trail ahead of them.

“I never  _ never _ want to be less than what I am ever!” He yells not meaning to yell but it burbled out of the tulgey wood before he could call it back snicker snack and- “I don’t understand how  _ how _ you can be less can stifle, can live like this and I will  _ not _ go easy on you just because you… because you… chose to be weak!” 

 

His head swims, spins, heart racing and he hasn’t started running yet except… except he is running, running so fast, as fast as only he can run, the hot wind whipping past his face as his arms pump, as the blood moves through his legs his muscles stressed, stretched,  _ alive _ and not stuffed away in a little box to watch the endless stars that he’ll never see. 

“Catch me!” He yells turning his head, seeing Julian falling further and further back. “If you think you can, if you think you’ll ever reach the moon wavering in the water, if you ever think you’ll be able to catch it the way you are you’re wrong  _ wrong _ !”

 

Head tucked he runs faster, starting to feel that stretch of muscles, that limit that tells him if he goes farther pushes harder he can break it if he just does a little  _ more _ , yells louder, looks closer, sleeps less, thinks, thinks-

“You think I chose this?! You think I like living like this?!” He hears Julian’s voice behind him, their steps thundering, and he’s a tiger beetle tearing across the rocky red landscape so fast that even his enhanced sight blurs, his feet tracking by memory as he runs harder and harder towards the top.

“Of course you like it! You have everything,  _ everything _ I ever wanted!” Jack’s muscles are starting to scream at him and he screams back just as loudly that he doesn’t get tired and he doesn’t feel pain and if he just keeps going he’ll-

 

“Did you ever think that I might want what you have?! To not have to hide?! To not have to lie to  _ everyone _ ?! To wonder when they’ll finally find out, to wonder when they’ll all hate me?!” Closer, coming closer which  _ shouldn’t _ be possible but Julian has those legs but Julian isn’t Jack, and Julian cannot  _ cannot _ do what Jack does! 

“Lie to them not me! Everyone  _ everyone  _ loves you!” Jack sees the trail cutting through rocks but sees the rocks themselves tall intimidating sentries of the mountain and he launches himself, feeling the impact combined with his speed when he leaps, kicking off the first up high, just enough momentum to grab the ledge swinging up.

 

“They don’t even know me! They love a lie, they love a fake!” Jack’s eyes are wide as he turns back, pulling, the joints strained, seeing Julian… following him which shouldn’t be  _ Possible _ because Julian said that he couldn’t do what Jack could do and- “They love what they want to see, my father loved his perfect son as long as he  _ behaved _ . As long as he smiled, performed, as long as my father smiled I was good and he didn’t hurt me, does that sounds familiar?!” There’s a tear as Jack jumps again, he knows it, distal tricep rupture which happened when he was thirteen and climbing up up was the only way to get away from… Julian’s following him and he doesn’t know why but he has to Get Away but he has to Stop because Julian is… Julian is

 

_ “Why are you crying?!””I didn’t pay for you to be a failure””I didn’t pay for you to be weak” “Stop wasting my time with Nonsense””Stop playing stupid””Be Silent Be Still Be Have Be Better!” _

 

Jack stops, dropping back down to the ledge, holding his hand out, his right arm hanging.

“Jack, you’re-” He takes Julian’s hand, pulling him up easily, fighting the urge to step back against the rock.

“It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we should be more attached to one another.” Jack says, raising both arms, hugging Julian to him tightly.

“Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,” Julian answers to his shoulder, hugging him back just as fiercely. 

“Why do you… why do you do that hm?” he asks at last, having wanted to ask for so long. “Are you making fun of me? Do you think that I don’t know where it comes from hmhm?” He feels Julian shake his head, feeling Julian breathing into his shoulder, the both of them trying to turn shuddered respirations to steady breaths.

 

“It’s not that I… I guess I just want to remind you that I understand… and that I’m a mutant too.”

 

And he never thought that he would ever find anyone else who would say those words to him.

 


	27. Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Julian dress to go dancing

“You don’t dance? How have you gotten so many dates without knowing how to dance?” Jack straightens Julian’s tie with a cock of his head, sighing, fixing his hair because Julian’s hair doesn’t seem to like pomade either, but Jack is Determined.

“I promise you in the twenty fourth century that dancing is hardly a prerequisite for a robust social life.”

“I know that,” Jack is quick to snap, “I know your your mouth catches plenty of flies with its lies,” he mumbles and then stops because that’s unkind and that’s… not what he wants to be.

 

“Well Garak will be pleased to hear that one,” Julian says, paying it little mind. “Is this one of those… “our parents” things?” he asks as he looks at them both in the mirror, in the matching zoot suits, the big shoulders and the bright colors. Jack likes the lines of him, neat, symmetrical, slim, graceful like a ballerina and he sighs considering the question because it is and isn’t one of those “our parents” things. Jack crosses his arms, an impatient tap of the foot as he makes a noncommittal noise with a sigh. Just… looking at them both in the mirror two houses alike in dignity but still so different, still at war.

 

“You are the fire, You are the ire of the heavens. You are the distorted images of moist and dewy glasses of redemption. And so, they have long taken your flesh in this consummating perdition.”

“I don’t know that one actually.” Julian says looking lost when he does. Jack hugs himself tighter, looking away from the reflection. He doesn’t like it when Julian doesn’t Understand. Not after that day.

“You… you wouldn’t...” He stops and  _ breathes  _ and collects those thoughts into words not understanding why things come out easier with Julian and more difficult at the same time. “There was an old archive, this… this lost thing I found once at the Institute but they monitor hm… watching, the hills have eyes hmhm. So I… only read a few...”

 

Jack trails off again, his jaw starting to lock because it’s easy to say Pointless things (and he thinks maybe that’s why Julian and the rest add such extraneous nonsense) but Personal things are… something else. He just barely stops himself from biting his thumb again because he’s  _ trying _ not to do that and he thinks it would be easier if he could just use his hands to talk but that was Discouraged because they didn’t “fix him” to speak with his hands. 

 

So Jack thinks silently of dancing, the freedom of movement, how he’s limitless when he dances, how he can jump, bend, spin, be strong, and he wants to share that with Julian so so  _ badly _ because they were made for things like beautiful dances and it’s frustrating that he can’t tell him that but…

 

Jack steps back, unfolds himself, and looks up.

 

“Computer, play twentieth century Tiny Dancer,” he says, holding his breath hopefully as the music cues a smile tugging the side of his face.

 

“I’ll show you mmhm,” he says determined, holding out hand. 

 

Julian takes it with a smile.

 

“I’d like that.”

 

“I’m leading though.”

 

“This time.”

 


	28. Butterfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack reflecting on his impulsive bites as well as biting Julian's body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wasn't super happy with the immediate transition from one of the drabbles to another so I added this in there as a bit more of a step thus adding one more chapter lol

There is a catalogue of things that jack can recall back as early as the first blink of eyes into the world- at least he feels as if that’s a memory rather than a dream. Lauren is the one with difficulty distinguishing dreams, after all, not him! There’s an equal catalogue of things that have escaped, flown away small metal butterfly wings, flapping, another making an appearance with each question that comes to him for which there is no answer. Patrick had asked him once  _ why _ he bites his finger, his thumb the way that he does and the answer is a simple one - it relaxes him, the bite into flesh, the feel of his teeth, the rush, though Lauren insists the best bites are the meat of the palm which is Nonsense.

 

But Jack doesn’t why understand the origin “why” himself.

 

He doesn’t Understand the why of that reflex, to nip nervously, unconsciously at things coming near his mouth. The Trill talked about all sort of nebulous theories, patterns, more Nonsense as far as Jack was concerned because knowing the cause of a tidal wave may prevent future incidents but it does nothing for the wreckage at hand. Whether it stems from some Trauma or as Miles suggested because he doesn’t eat enough (he doesn’t, he Can’t,  _ the daily hummingbird assaults existence with improbability  _ ) it’s a thing that Is, much like Jack himself as Miles also says. It’s one of several dozen butterflies each one rippling out across the world inside his head, inside the bell jar a hurricane swirling ‘round and ‘round.

 

But for those involuntary nips, Julian seems to like them, shivers Good shivers when Jack’s teeth are to his neck, to his shoulder down down every bit of them, drawing skin between his lips suck til blood wells to the surface. The skin inside Julian’s thighs is the softest, the most sensitive and that’s where he loves it the most  _ a gasp damper than weeping, a liquid, a sweat, an oil without a name _ , and one night when Jack had begun at the neck Julian allowed him to quest onward fighting windmills, Julian’s wild limb akimbo drawing every great gospel ever sang and the sound was so soothing, so pleasing that Jack could close his eyes and map a symphony to it, so calm, so deliriously drifting that his mouth sought the tower of Babel raised to the heavens with Julian babbling in what surely must have been every tongue of the world as Jack drank him down unconscious and-

 

“Oh… oh god, Jack I’m going to-”

 

Swallowed.


	29. Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack loves being intimate with Julian in all sorts of creative ways

“Is that… what I think it is?” Julian asks, staring somewhat confused as he opens his eyes. Jack leans back on his hands, sitting on the bed, looking up at him quite Proud of himself because it takes a lot to rattle Julian, to shake a little chaos into that brain and he sees chaos remolded into interest, intrigue, and Jack stops himself from pointing out the folly of such a question when Jack isn’t a mind reader but…  but it’s exactly what Julian likely thinks it is, his diamond Jubilee kneeling on the bed, crawling over naked to poke at it while Jack just studies him, studies his body whispering softly  _ “Mais les ténèbres sont elles-mêmes des toiles _

_ ù vivent, jaillissant de mon oeil par milliers, des êtres disparus aux regards familiers.” _

“Baudelaire,” Julian whispers back as he kneels in front of Jack’s left leg, fingers lightly stroking.

 

The piece is his - as near as it can be and now that it’s saved he’s never doing that again as long as he lives because it was Unpleasant - a carefully made replica of his erect penis fastened down to his knee with the brace, Julian stroking it watching the soft replicated skin slide back and down and his face is… weird is the word that Jack would use. It’s aroused but that’s what’s weird about watching that high flush of arousal on Julian’s cheeks, detecting those extra respirations, seeing extra licking of lips, eyelids falling a few picometers down, head bowing a degree or two and he seems very eager, very eager for a construct of a sex organ, but secretly Jack likes that because it’s for a construct of  _ his _ sex organ so-

 

“You know you didn’t have to do this,” Julian says stupidly as if it wasn’t obvious that the decision was freely made. Of course he didn’t  _ have _ to sit through that and endure the skin crawling and the feel of fire ants licking his skin but the end result,  _ that _ end result lasting years, decades, centuries preserved somewhere in rock and as is an easy decision for ten minutes of Unpleasant sensation. But Jack is in his head long enough that Julian keeps talking, again that weird intercourse babble that Jack has noticed he enjoys while Jack is exploring with his hands or his mouth, a fountain of Pointless things. “It’s really… this big?” Julian asks again excited, aroused, this time prompting an irritated sigh because there are only so many Thing that Jack can let go unchallenged.

“Of course those are the dimensions why would I have it made if those weren’t the right dimensions?”

 

“Of course,” Julian agrees and Jack focuses a moment on the light above because he’s not supposed to reply to every single banal statement Julian says but he finds that the thick whisper of “Might I try it out?” doesn’t trigger the irritation because… Julian sounds just so genuinely pleased and Jack decides to go back to monitoring the dilation of pupils and the flow of muscles, the tension of Julian’s body, the imperceptible blink shake of anticipation as Jack lowers his leg down so that Julian can crawl up his body and kiss him deeply. Ah that’s better. He likes kissing Julian, he likes Julian taking the small tube beside him, pressing Jack’s right hand between his, warm lubricant sluiced onto two fingers, gliding up and down and Jack finds those ministrations intriguing every time.

 

“I might need a little more stretching,” Julian breathes against his mouth but of course that only makes sense except these are statements to Titillate, to arouse - Julian, he realizes responsive to that language whether from Jack’s mouth or even his own - so Jack knows now that the proper response isn’t pedantic, but to shift his catalogue of speech to pulp genre, and thinks of everything he’s read for reference in the last few weeks, the language of pornography, a far more nuanced study than anything he’s had to learn to date. It fascinates him because every word of every construct has to be analyzed for sound and Julian needs to be watched for response as well.

 

Sometimes Jack will make him laugh without knowing why when laughter isn’t the goal but Julian’s eyes shutting heard melodies sweet but those unheard are sweeter - Keats, the newly born Julian in his head whispers with a playful smile - so he remembers and indexes the chaining of those words, sometimes hesitant, sometimes bold, today bold winning the day when he lightly circles Julian’s hole with his index finger, teasing eyes until the flutter with just the right amount of wordless urging to push inside, “I’m… I’m going to fuck you… so hard so deep that when… when you die my cock in you will be the last last thing you remember,”he says with a swallow, watching for a laugh, for amusement. 

 

Too much effervescence, too effusive, too silly, he thinks, but Julian just moans and nods, a fast excited bob on Jack’s lap, urging Jack to please hurry and that’s Good because the press of Julian’s cock to Jack’s stomach pulses, leaks excitement. So Jack doesn’t  _ waste time _ , stretching him, working him loose and pliant  as he’s done so many times before with other toys that weren’t him. He’s learned that Julian is always so easy -so say some on the Promenade which Jack wouldn’t argue, not mean if it’s true and all -  which makes him exceptionally fun to play with and pleasure, and Julian is begging him to please Put. It In. 

 

Punctuated speech just like that, Jack nodding, urging Julian back, guiding himself (it’s him technically not attached but Absolutely still him!) there, about to open his mouth when Julian looks at him delirious smile (already? Oh… okay…) in place as his hand, Julian’s over top slowly lets the tip penetrate, lets Julian slowly sink, sink, the guttural gasps drawn wrenched from his throat as Jack’s hands move to his ass to hold him steady not quite a pattern which is nice, which is Julian already so blissed out, so heated, so head swimming stars going off behind his eyes that every sound escaping him is too jolted and fast to be synced with his brain.

 

“Jaaack,” slurred out, Jack raising his knee, shifting his leg, hearing Julian whimper and lean over, pulling at his own hair, scratching at his own throat the faster Jack rocks, the faster Jack fucks him on it and he can feel the sweat between Julian’s thighs and sometimes he blanks out, caught up in the motions, caught up in the observations that he forgets to speak (and sometimes he speaks without realizing it!) but now is the latter, hearing Julian’s “Yesyesyes” he realizes that he’s been asking him if it’s good, if he likes it, if he’d like him to go harder, yes to all until the bed is bouncing, Jack’s arms efficient and steady, Julian always to light, so easy to move, and Julian’s left hand has found its way to grip his own shaft, half fumble jerk, biting his lip til it turns that nice white and he’s releasing over Jack’s stomach with a soft beautiful sob.

 

Lights, fire flickering over Julian’s face, Jack always marvels that all of this is because of him, and he realizes as Julian’s kissing him sloppily again, half shoving his back, that his own breathing is heavy, heart racing as well.


	30. Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack loves the rain and wants to share that with Julian

Jack loves the sound of the rain, he loves the faint mist of the rain on his face in the summer, warm, happy, plastering his hair to his face, content, loved, accepted by every drop dripping down his skin. He likes to lay on the wet grass eyes shut under a tree and let the rain fall down filtered through the leaves and branches until he just… floats under the sky, in the sky, the droplets flowing like happy tears down his cheeks until he… forgets to breathe or forgets that he is breathing and just feels his heart slow, the white behind his eyelids relaxing him, sometimes blurring in a gray haze but always bright, always a sea that he could float on forever.

 

The warm rain is the most comforting sensation on his bare skin and its the only time that he’s not uneasy removing his clothes, exposed, “skyclad” he read once which made sense because he feels like his body is being offered to the sky as a tribute for whatever gods may bring the rain- and alright he knows that there aren’t really gods and that while those things called the “Q” may meet some textbook definition of deity they still have nothing to do with rain though they may be looking down from whatever nebulous realm they inhabit but that’s not his problem it’s theirs. He never considers his body much outside of being properly put together in clothing.

 

Julian tells him that it’s “bloody brilliant”.

 

Julian is laying on the grass beside him, the holosuite a simulation of a wooded area of the Kendra Province on Bajor (a loan from The Captain himself, so said Julian excited, smiling, big smile, big teeth so very excited very nice very  _ Julian _ ), and it’s perfect, like every dream he’s had since his imprisonment, the temperature warm, the rain coming down gently lightly with a command from Julian and Jack laying down under the ancient Bajoran ash cousin, breathing, blissful, at peace with the little pitter patters on his skin dotting them down from the thick foliage on the branches. 

 

Julian didn’t understand why Jack was unbuttoning his cardigan, why he was undressing once they walked under the tree but Jack didn’t quite know how to explain it to him so he just sort of looked at him silently, unbunching his shoulders, with just the two of them that tension finally relaxing, his muscles relaxing, arms stretched, breathing out, feeling his face relax as his mind told him that it was a perfect thirty celsius and he just had to blink blink at the wonder of it as he folded his cardigan and set it down. 

 

Jack cleared his throat and gave a shrug of his shoulders, stopped with his hands on the hem of the sweater beneath it and wondered if Julian would find it… Incorrect to just… Jack breathes out with an agitated bite of his lips and he signs the word “inexplicable” with an uneasy dart of his eyes because he could hear the castigating screaming in his head telling him to stop his Nonsense because he could say it out loud so this isn’t necessary but… but Julian just gave a little pause and Jack supposed it was just one of those “weird Jack things” or however Julian cached the term in his head (he decided that he  _ didn’t  _ want to know but that’s the expression that flit across Julian’s face whenever one of those arose so...)

 

Jack resumed undressing after making sure to mumble that it wasn’t a “sex thing” to which Julian rolled his eyes and told him that not  _ everything _ with him was a “sex thing” and Jack said “Ha!” and told him that everything absolutely was a “sex thing” with him and made Absolutely Certain to smile because that was a joke and he didn’t make those often but Julian always laughed, a soft sound, a shake of his head, another tinkle of blissful auditory rain when Julian laughed that low sound half under his breath. 

 

“If it’s all the same to you though, I think I’ll stop at my y-fronts,” Julian said undressing too, which Jack replied they were only going to get wet and Julian said next time he’d wear a bathing suit but they weren’t going swimming so it wasn’t really necessary but as fixated on intercourse as Julian was, Jack didn’t Understand why he was so… self conscious about his body or being naked like this.

“Good symmetry, good lines, good shape, proportioned well, smooth skin, pleasant skin tone, warm, overall exceptionally pleasing to the eye,” Jack rattled off clinically noting his large forehead and nostrils but deciding that Julian’s features were what made him Julian and he’d look rather strange without them.

 

Julian was… silent to that and Jack finished folding the last garment carefully, searching his face making sure that he was… copasetic seeing that he was smiling. He did that a lot lately, made that silly expression and Jack asked him what it was for (and maybe it was a look that made him warm, that made him look down with some emotion that he couldn’t quite describe except as a feeling of breathless but Good breathless) and he… didn’t think he was ready to hear the answer so Julian would always just pause and say nothing which was a lie (because  _ nothing _ is “nothing”) but Julian always followed “nothing” up with a “something” of Julian’s lips pressed lightly to his jaw or sometimes a “something” as simple as a squeeze of his shoulder or fingertips brushing the side of his neck.

 

“Something” today was Julian surprising him with a cinnamon candy that he popped into his mouth avoiding Jack’s teeth with a smirk promising that he had a tin back in his room and Jack was torn between cinnamon and rain just a moment before he tilted his head back and let the mist bring him to life. Julian said he didn’t quite understand the appeal of laying back in the wet grass getting rained but he supposed if Jack could sit back and cheer for Liverpool while complaining that all the best players were barred from playing so it was Pointless then he could spend an hour or two getting wet.

 

_ “Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—”  _ Jack whispers, Julian taking his hand, both of them saying at once “-And I love the rain.”

 

“Langston Hughes,” Julian whispers to him and Jack gives his hand a squeeze.


	31. Look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment that Jack realizes...

It’s a look that answers the question. Jack didn’t know how to answer it before. Neither did Sarina- Bashir and his incessant  _ questions _ . No, not “Bashir”. He... hasn’t been “Bashir” for some time now. 

 

_ “Do you love me?” _

 

That was the question. That was the riddle of the sphinx that Sarina couldn’t answer. That was the trap door sprung down and… Jack didn’t know how to answer the question either. Julian didn’t ask it out loud. Not like he had Sarina. It was an  _ unspoken  _ question Jack heard when the moment slipped into silence.

 

_ “I love you, Jack,” _ whispered so softly to his hair that he’s sure he wasn’t meant to hear- except there’s nothing that he can’t hear and if Julian said it then he  _ must  _ have meant for him to hear.  _ I hear all things in the heaven and in the earth... _ There was silence following, Julian’s mouth on his neck, his arms warm, breathing, lots of breath, always  _ breathing  _ because Julian never has trouble breathing.

 

Jack doesn’t feel like his ribcage had been made large enough for his lungs and he asked Julian once to check for him, to run a scan because if the Procedure had damaged him… if the Procedure had… shrunk them then maybe that’s all that was wrong with him and if they could just make his ribs big enough for his lungs to expand properly, if he could just  _ breathe _ then he could… be free too.

 

Julian had checked for him, seriously, solicitously. Julian doesn’t humor him anymore, he  _ listens.  _ He listens, considers, nods with a soft “alright” and takes his hands and… Jack is  _ positive _ that Julian wouldn’t lie if Jack’s lungs weren’t the right size. Right now they feel too small again, the vice tighter, the watch enveloped in cotton the tell tale heart beating, beating and he looks around the Promenade where he’s been standing, the breeze of passers by passing by and he’s been staring so long into the shop of  _ Garak’s Clothier’s _ that he sees the Cardassian, the Morlock stop and sigh in his direction as if from a hundred feet away he’s  _ upsetting _ people.

 

Well Jack doesn’t care about the  _ eidolon  _ blinking back at him. He only cares about the traveler who’s yet to wander home through that dreamland. He only cares about Julian who hasn’t stopped looking back at him, who hasn’t stopped smiling at him, who gives a nudge to the unhelpful shade and motions for Jack to cross that limitless void between them and... be with him. 

 

Jack looks down, realizing that his feet had become unstuck (they were never stuck!). The People who’d caused him to freeze, blur to nothing but a haze of the dead floating by, and the path is clear, and he can make it, he can do this, he can… do anything as long as Julian is looking at him like that. 

 

Jack smiles back- and runs as fast as he can.

 

He knows the answer now.


	32. Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Julian's morning routine

The clock is in sync, the old grandfather clock in Jack’s head chiming for 6AM. He checks the time against the computer re-synchronizing it because it’s fallen a few seconds off and he likes for it to be precise. The computers on station recognizes when he motions to his wrists and looks up for the time, Julian having explained that if he weren’t able to hear the words would flash for him on display instead of being spoken aloud. He wonder if the computers at the Institute would have done the same if he asked. He never noticed Sarina communicating with them but then her motions weren’t steady enough. The silent communication is nice, away from the symphony of sound. 

 

Jack is awake but he isn’t dressed.

 

He doesn’t sleep as such and Julian seems to have finally Understood that he isn’t going to sleep like a Normal person so he’s let him alone about it (until the next time, Jack thinks, the next Solution, but that’s neither here nor here because right now he’s finally left alone to his own devices at night.) He stays quiet, a churchmouse a twofold silence, sea and shore. body and soul and his body is silent as he reads and writes in the journal, sometimes sitting next to the bed so that he can listen to Julian breathing deep, breathing with him, Julian’s breaths always easy to follow, relaxing him, steadying with him, Jack staring out in the darkness as peaceful as he ever feels.

 

Jack speaks softly to himself at times, his whispers joining Julian’s breaths in reciting something he’s read- tonight  _ The Sun Also Rises  _ which always makes him think of The Institute, of them, the lost generation, the augments at the Institute or wandering aimless through the stars without purpose or direction or anything they’re allowed to do. 

_ “You ought to dream,” _ Jack whispers,  _ “all our biggest businessmen have been dreamers,” _ thinking of the Ferengi, of Quark who always looks at him Warily which he hates but… but he Understands and he Hates that he does.

 

Sometimes Julian murmurs little answers back half asleep, and in rarer moments he’ll wake up for a spot of tea and a game of Stratego (though Jack maintains steadfastly that sacrificing your own piece is strictly against the rules and cheating and Julian never would have won if he hadn’t cheated) or another game or a roll over on the floor, chess men flying when the game’s gotten heated and Julian being terribly ticklish (and yet to find Jack’s Spot which he’s taking to the grave) makes hypnotic laughter that Jack could listen to forever. Not tonight though, tonight is a Standard and he looks over his notes and writes a few more lines.

 

But soon enough it’s 6 and those restless hours have ceased and he can wake Julian up slowly, softly, gently, “wake up wake up wake up” shake harder harder until Julian’s eyes blink open sleepily at him telling him with a mumble that he doesn’t need to put his face so close but smiling when he says it. Contradictory but it’s a contradiction that Jack Understands as he starts telling Julian about the current events he watched an hour earlier, catching him up, passionately debating the merits of the latest Federation Klingon agreement, the latest news of the war while Julian rises and sometimes says Jack really ought to be sleeping instead of sitting up all night.

 

“I’ll sleep,” Jack answers with a shrug, jumping to his feet with that unspoken “eventually”. He counts down the hazy dream clock thinking it’s been about five hours since he last closed his eyes like that so he’ll probably be due again but- “Shower?” He asks hopefully, hands already at the hem of the thick flannel top of his pajamas. He likes showering with Julian, likes being warm with him under the spray, likes “waking him up” with his mouth, though Julian always says he can’t afford to run late, but the staff is Competent and they can handle their doctor wobbling in unsteadily from time to time (though never mussed, and never actually late because if there’s one thing Jack does Exceptionally well it’s track the time!) 

 

There’s a certain euphoria Jack feels in his spine between from hearing the soft pants of his name under the spray.

 

Julian looks thoughtful a moment, looks at Jack with that look that says this will be a morning where he’d “fancy a little romp”, and smiles. Shower it is! Jack thinks with a yawn, that blackness around his vision starting to move again.

 

Shower then sleep. 

 


	33. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian, Jack, and Miles get ready for an adventure in the holosuites

“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.” Jack grins at Julian devilishly as he gives a tip of the brown hat. Julian looks back at him with a sigh as he twirls around the room in the fitted white dress nearly tripping in the heels. Jack sighs as he catches him thinking that Julian swore he’d practiced and Jack has no problem walking in heels so maybe it’s the long legs getting tangled up. He’s not sure but maybe they can do this barefoot because if Julian is tripping everywhere then this won’t get done so-

 

So Miles whistles as Julian stands back up fixing the wig (not blonde because that wouldn’t make sense and the Femme Fatale is usually blonde but if Miles’ look is any indication then that’s still perfectly fatal or definitely fatal if Julian trips and breaks a leg.)

“I still don’t see why I can’t just play another detective,” Julian says shooting Miles a glare.

“Because the dress is good for your legs and so are the heels hm. You want him at his age walking around in those things? Are you trying to to drum up more business to the infirmary? Not paid by the hour, by the piece, not paid at all so you should be happy to keep him out of there mmhm.”

 

“Hey, speak for yourself, I’ve got good legs for heels!” Miles protests and Jack… doesn’t know if he’s joking so he assumes joke because that’s... Usually safer to laugh, so he laughs as Julian straightens the dress out shaved legs (nice touch! “And smooth, very very smooth,” Jack had said as he spent a good fifteen minutes running his hands over them).

“Alright, next you’re the dame then I’ll be the dame but I’m not  _ not _ shaving the mustache.” They’ll have to kill him first, he decides before Julian trips again and Jack decides he’ll just have to carry him to the holosuites after all.

 

“This dame’s got gams for days hmhm?!” Jack calls out to the din of noise at Quark’s while Miles jauntily leads them up up and away to the world of the jade necklace. 

 

Julian’s only response is to hide his face behind the silk purse.

 


	34. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack loves kissing Julian more than anything.

It’s a strange sensation. Not the kissing. The kissing was never the strange part. The kissing is warm, wet- very wet- very  _ messy _ right now because it’s Intense... But it isn’t strange. It’s nice. Intense, with that capital “i” is Julian sweaty, mussed, mouth open, panting Jack’s name, begging him for more, that vague “more” explained to Jack as that stimulation which makes everything too sensitive and bright and  _ painful,  _ and Jack has no idea how Julian finds that pleasant but he does. Intense for Jack, the Good intense, is Julian’s warm body, is Julian’s sweat mixing with his, is motion that races his heart, that plasters his hair to his face, is Julian’s eyes hazy and out of control while Jack’s hands and mouth make him plead and whimper and nails digging into Jack’s skin like the tyger, dread hands, sharp claws, suddenly sharp teeth biting his shoulder as he just...  _ cries _ .

 

Jack never thought he’d actually enjoy making someone cry. For Jack tears are bitter miserable things, but being with Julian has made him realize that like good and bad “Intense”, there are good and bad tears. Bad tears are Sarina telling him that he’s hurt her feelings, that he’s made her feel like less and he  _ hates  _ those- hates himself when he realizes he’s caused them. But good tears? Good tears are Julian laid back on the bed, eyes shut tightly at first breathing steady growing sharper, his knees trembling as Jack holds them open, fingers starting to curling into his own chest, stomach rising up, down, faster, depressing down further with every shuddered breath as Jack puts his mouth to his sex, watching him bite his lip, face flushed, eyes fluttering open, staring at the ceiling like the dead, like a perfect statue with tears rolling down the corners of his eyes as he spills into Jack’s mouth.

 

Or equally vivid, the slip of Jack’s thigh between his spread legs, the push of his knee with the device firmly attached sometimes slowly undulating, sometimes driving in hard. Jack hasn’t decided which position he particularly favors though he prefer the ones like now which are skin to skin, breath to breath, feeling Julian’s warmth pressed tightly to him. There is though, an intrigue to letting Julian straddle that leg on a chair, facing away, forced to draw his own pleasure, every quivering surge of muscle flexing with perfect anatomical precision that Jack’s eye catches and there is a primitive satisfaction to sometimes pushing Julian to the floor on hands and knees and slowly pulling his eager body back to the prosthetic and hearing him sob Jack’s name.

 

Perhaps he’s a bit of an animal a the heart after all.

 

Julian doesn’t understand how Jack can work so tirelessly, so breathlessly himself, slowly, languidly with his mouth, arms, legs, fingers, without so much a stirring of arousal. Jack doesn’t understand the appeal of that highest point, that climax, that peak, that ascension above the clouds as Julian calls it. For him every twitch of nerves to that end is like a deep fall in space making everything on his skin burn like little insects lit on fire, like dying stars, like he needs to rip off every layer until it stops. But Julian? Julian loves it. Julian is sensuality personified, an ode to the nymphs of Heliades made into trees, a seductive sway to their every motion, like that a man born of those arbors and Jack… finds that he could drown in him, finds that there is no greater joy that warms in his chest than just… letting that heat warm him.

 

_ But man, proud man drest in a little brief authority most ignorant of what he’s assured,  _ he thinks in those times, wondering if the angels would weep to see such grotesque things before heaven. Perhaps, but perhaps, Jack doesn’t care. Jack could kiss him forever, could happily spend hours tasting him, touching him, mapping every part of him with every sense so that even if… even if this ends... even when there’s nothing but atoms and stardust, there will be some cluster somewhere that holds that ghost, that  _ memento mori  _ of Julian’s body until the last question is answered and everything explodes and comes back into being. Let the Julian atoms hold the carnal remnants of memory dust and let the Jack atoms hold the rest because absolutely everything about Julian’s body is exciting and Worthy and he makes Jack feel Worthy. It’s warm- it’s Europa in flux, it’s a melted pool sixty kilometers deep, dark, beautiful, a float along that he can get lost in for nothing nothing echoing blissfully in his head making everything blissfully ecstatically quiet.

 

When he’s kissing Julian he doesn’t think and he doesn’t dream and his thoughts don’t run over the tracks  _ pathump pathump. _ It’s the sound of nothing but breathing and heartbeats and blood flow and  _ Jack please Jack. _ It’s Julian’s bow of a mouth that’s pliant beneath his, it’s the feeling of another breathing into him sustaining him, Julian’s CO2 filling his lungs, the feel of his tongue over Julian’s teeth, memorizing every little indent, letting his tongue run over the ridges of Julian’s palate (one more than Jack, the spacing a few nanometers wider) until he softly strokes the little space between the soft palate and the uvula, the  _ arcus glossopalitinus  _ that makes Julian whimper softly and instinctively swallow every trickle of Jack’s cells from the  _ filiform papilla _ to the apex. 

 

Jack  _ loves  _ kissing Julian. No, that’s not what’s strange today. What’s strange is the  _ denim _ . Jack, again to something Julian doesn’t understand, prefers to be unclothed when they kiss like this in these long languid sessions. He likes the feel of Julian’s skin, and Julian is so warm that he doesn’t feel cold. He likes Julian’s hands on his hips, he likes them squeezing his hips and thighs, hard, bold, desiring him so much even though he himself doesn’t desire in that same way. Sarina told him that she found Julian’s intensity intimidating, that he and Jack had that in common and Jack didn’t understand, didn’t understand until now, until moments like these when he looks down, straddling Julian’s thighs, looking for a moment (freeze stop in his mind! He holds that moment in a vacuum SNAP! And swears he lives it forever) into Julian’s eyes dark, pupils blown wide, dizzy, delirious, fevered flushed skin a measure of how Close he is. 

 

Julian matches his intensity, game set, match, even with these  _ clothes _ , these  _ jeans _ , these vices around his thighs squeezing them just as Julian’ s hands do. Jack doesn’t like the things because they’re tight and thick and they make it hard to  _ feel _ and Julian doesn’t understand how Important it is to feel him. He doesn’t understand how Jack measures the slide of every inch of Julian’s engorged penis -right,  _ cock _ , (that’s the word during coitus! Use the right lexicon, right!) pushing against him. It’s Important to know that measurement, to know that feeling and he can’t feel any of it in his jeans so he can’t measure that desire, he can’t measure that leak of fluid from the tip, can’t measure the pulse presses and it  _ annoys _ him as he gives small sharp nips to Julian’s lower lip, watching, counting each bite until it’s swollen and red and Julian’s breaths hitch louder with each subsequent kiss following.

 

When he’s kissing Julian, Jack maps and measures and remeasures relentlessly- so precisely that he can recreate him one molecule at a time if he wakes up back in The Institute with everyone gone but him, if he wakes up in The Nexus or slips back through reality and time to a hell where there is no Julian. Every bit will be recreated down to the irritated cells of skins around Julian’s mouth tinted a dusky mauve from Jack’s mustache- a series of swaths painted with a fine bristle brush! He can still measure those but it’s not enough and he used to believe as Sartre said that Hell is other people but that’s amended, rewritten, recast, because Hell is other people who  _ aren’t Julian  _ and if he can’t keep that measurement then it’s not going to work and he needs to… to 

 

“...breathe, breathe…” Julian whispers to him, eyes already nearly closed and Jack doesn’t know if he’s talking to himself or whispering those words to Jack but… “...breathe… that’s good... I love you…” Right, that’s to Jack then, and those are the three Magical words (“ _ I too will try the virtue of those magical words and see if at my bidding the door will open…”) _ that no one has ever said to him in his life, and especially not like  _ that _ , not whispered reverently, not like a prayer- and he hates that he  _ can’t say it back _ , that it sticks stiff, stuck, and he just has to bury his face in Julian’s neck and apologize because there aren’t words, there aren’t pithy poems, there aren’t particles of dust in the entire universe to encapsulate… not enough exponents in infinity to ever enumerate how truly that Jack-

 

“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips,” he whispers, knowing that no matter how soft he whispers, no matter how slight of a breath his words that Julian always hears him and he kisses him again, feeling Julian rock desperately against him, still feeling that pea like the princess through the pillows, feeling the pe-prick  _ prick _ , he corrects himself  because there’s a prick of his teeth to Julian’s neck, Julian’s prick pressed tightly to his rear Julian’s thighs trembling beneath him as he measures that spot, that exact location on Julian’s neck that his teeth make love to so that Julian can sob his name, dig those fingers into his hips, spider climb them up his back heedless of his strength, of his enhancements, crushing, suffocating so… so tightly as he turns his head, Jack feeling the wetness on Julian’s face to his cheek, a sharp blink out of focus behind his eyes as Julian just breathes against him.

 

He can’t say it but… but Jack presses four very deliberate kisses to Julian’s cheek, jaw, chin, then the corner of his mouth, drawing that small “x” for the spot, for the final clue, for the treasure buried so deep that he’s afraid the sand’s gone and crushed it. He can’t  _ say _ it say it, but he lets Julian know every day as many times as he can that he loves him, and that Julian is his Absolutely Everything and maybe (just maybe, no guarantees because she was absolutely  _ wrong _ about the cosmic constant!) Sarina had been right. He repeats those four precise presses once more, just to be sure, to be sure that he’s understood as Julian pants into his should, Jack feeling the faint ripple of facial muscles moving Julian’s mouth to a smile. He loves the tremble of Julian’s smile blooming onto his shoulder.

 

_ “You make me so very happy.” _

 


	35. Ask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A misunderstanding over lunch on the matter of what Julian expects

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A trigger warning here though I'm not sure how to phrase it. I would say this may be uncomfortable for some because there's a heavy dose of unintentional emotional manipulation from Julian and emotional intensity and anxiety from Jack.

“No. Nuh-uh no way. You can stuff that slimy thing back into the machine hm, stuff it and bury it and forget the Taberger Ring mmhm.” Jack is looking at the plate between them, looking at the Octopus, at the _ poulpe _ thinking maybe that  _ this _ Jules is  _ that _ Jules come back to kill him like Nemo’s ill fated crew member. He imagines it wriggling going down and scoots back on the seat a little more. 

“Come on, Jack, it won’t hurt you. They really don’t have much taste to them.” He watches warily as Julian puts one of the slippery rings, slimed over with that sickeningly sweet smelling brown sauce.

“You don’t know that. You put all sort of dubious things in your mouth hm.”

“I might say the same for you,” Julian teases with a waggle of his eyebrows and Jack’s head whirls around looking,  _ looking _ to see if anyone heard that Innuendo, eyes wide.

 

DECORUM screams in his head in that castigating old owl’s screech and he has to scream it back down, hating that sudden anxiety.

 

Jack breathes, doesn’t frown, but doesn’t answer, doesn’t dignify that with a response, instead poking at one of the rings with his chopsticks warily. He counts half a second that it wriggles after he pokes it and decides that he is absolutely  _ not _ putting it anywhere near his mouth.

“Please?” Julian asks again. Right, new experiences, new things, discoveries, the great frontier. But still, there’s a world of difference between Julian passing his lips and some  _ creature. _

“Why? Why should I?” he huffs, giving it another poke, counting six tenths of a second that it stays jiggling this time.

“Because you love me?” Julian asks with a hopeful little smile and Jack… freezes.

 

_ “Because you love me…”  _ Is that how it works? He… doesn’t know. Jack is a blank, blinking, looking at Julian unsure of what to say. Is that… another joke? He plays and replays the tone back and doesn’t know because no one has… ever loved him. Julian jokes. Julian teases and Jack… is learning teasing but he doesn’t understand demand, he doesn’t understand if that… is that another Magic phrase? Is that a cue? Is that one of those things that he should Know but doesn’t know? There are so many of those and he  _ hates _ when Julian has to explain those because Jack should be better than this, he was  _ made _ better than this and why would they lock him away if he’s so Incapable that he can’t figure out something this simple and this stupid and-

 

“It’s alright,” Julian says with a shake of his head, the smile trying but Jack can see a flutter of downturned disappointment, let down, failed, a failure, and Jack is always sure to count every failure against every success because he- “don’t worry about it, Jack.”  _ isn’t _ a failure and he isn’t crazy and he might not be Normal but he can Adapt and if he can’t do that much then why would anyone-  _ Because I love you…  _ Maybe… maybe Julian shouldn’t have had to explain. Should it... have been enough that Julian asked?  _ Because I love you  _ isn’t an answer that can be quantified but Julian said that love wasn’t quantifiable, it just was and Julian didn’t know  _ why _ he loved Jack, he just did so-

 

Jack’s thumb is halfway to his mouth when he catches that Disappointment in Julian’s eyes at gesture, blaring like a beacon loud screaming in his head and he hates it, hates it, backsliding down, down, the ball rolling up the hill for an eternity the water pouring down that slope of Earth slipping back back and what if… what if he slides so far back down to the bottom that it  _ stops _ ? That Julian stops loving him? What if there’s no hope no Potential and Julian… lets him go? Sends him away like Sarina because Sarina couldn’t  _ make the cut _ … Jack swallows hard and smiles for Julian because Julian tells him he has a marvelous smile and that’s Good because that disappointment is fading and Julian is smiling at him as he takes a piece of that… thing and brings it to his mouth.

 

He doesn’t taste anything. He doesn’t taste the sauce, doesn’t register anything but Julian smiling at him thinking that this is okay and that he can do this because it’s… a simple stupid thing and the thought that Julian would stop smiling at him, would stop taking his hand with a soft spoken “thank you” or “I love you” is… is unthinkable. Julian squeezes his hand, and Jack thinks that it’s worth it to be Worthy-

“That wasn’t so bad now was it?” The Octopus? No. No, and he should have known better right, right? Right. He nods and then immediately shakes his head eating another one, Julian bringing Jack’s hand to his mouth, lightly kissing the back of it, turning it over, kissing his palm, the inside of his wrist looking so very Proud of him. 

 

Jack has a Gauge, a careful Julian gauge measuring the parameters of his smile, the cadence, the decibel level of his voice, his tone, the amount his eyes crinkle at the corners so he knows how Happy he’s making him. He’s very happy now and so is Jack because he… understands this now. 

 

_ Because I love you… _

Because… Julian is… his Absolute Everything.

 

Jack continues eating until he thinks he’ll throw everything back up. 

 


	36. Drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The previous chapter resolved

It starts with seafood and ends with the ocean. There’s some sort of poetic irony that Jack is missing, that Jack will appreciate later because right now he’s too busy trying not to crawl out of his skin, trying not to vomit, trying to find somewhere to  _ hide  _ and maybe they think he’s dead and the safety protocols have failed and any moment they’ll shut them off and see him there but right now he’s under the pier and it’s at least several miles down in the holoprogram and it’s dark and calm and he can be alone with his thoughts and sit there with his legs pulled up to his chest trying to  _ breathe _ , trying to get it to work while he grits his teeth and tries not to throw up again.

 

DECORUM screams in his head as he piles sand over the mess, hands clutching his head and he tries to remember everything he knows about being cold and calm except that this isn’t a minor setback, it’s the end of everything and he was so close, going so well. He had friends, he had things he was writing he had a a life… had Dreams, he had Julian and all he had to do was just… just keep calm, let the Miles and Trill see him out of Normal clothes another hour (He wished he’d left everything on but Julian looked so Disappointed) and if it was just Miles it would have been fine but the Trill, the Dax kept talking and staring at him like he was under a glass he couldn’t Adapt and-

 

“Jack?”

 

_ “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker...” _ His ears flick hearing Julian, the sound of the ocean- the Atlantic in the holoprogram of the beautiful coast rebuilt and restored to the beautiful and bustling Coney Island beach before the wars except in this dream world Julian created it’s only ever as many people as he can handle and it’s the sun starting to set, the boardwalk lit up with lights and soon the ferris wheel will light up and-

 

“Jack?” Is Julian walking around in front of him and his first instinct is to snap that if he wanted to talk to anyone he wouldn’t have gone under the waves and swam and swam, that lung capacity only lasting three minutes with the lactic acid build up but enough to send him far away and if he didn’t want to be left alone he wouldn’t have hidden under the pier where only Julian’s eyes could spot him in the dark. But he doesn’t because he’s the one who’s Wrong and he’s the one who Failed, that careful balance capsizing the boat, pulled twenty thousand leagues under the sea to be devoured by that octopus.

 

All he can do is stare at Julian’s knees settling down in front of him and pull the finger from his mouth that had somehow found its way there and hold it out steady as he can.

 

“I sat as silent as a stone and knew, that he’d not said a word, that even the best of love must die, and had been savagely undone.” 

“Yeats,” Julian says automatically before pushing his finger back down and… and Jack smiles in spite of himself- “I don’t know what’s got you so upset or why you’re apologizing. Alright, god, you scared the living daylights out of me, I thought for a moment that you’d drowned and I wish if you were that uncomfortable you’d have just  _ said _ something-”

“Because you loved me,” Jack interrupts, head jerking up looking into Julian’s face searching. “I’m not stupid hm I know how it works you know how it works hmhm. We both know so it’s disingenuous unless you’re testing me and fine I failed but I’m not leaving the station, I’m not Sarina so-”

 

“Alright, slow down. You can call me slow or tease me about having the cheaper mods but…  _ please  _  what are you talking about?” Julian’s hands take his and he looks sincere and that isn’t helping because Jack was quite certain that he understood except now it doesn’t make sense any longer. 

“Why should I do anything you ask me to do hm? Because you loved me… because you loved me and fine  _ fine _ I didn’t tell you that I didn’t understand how it worked before but I do now mmhm.” 

“ _ Love _ , Jack, present tense. Is  _ that _ the reason that you haven’t been fussing about anything the last few weeks? Please tell me that’s not why. You  _ know _ that you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do. I wouldn’t expect that-”

 

“Because you love me!” Jack yanks his hands back standing up, arms around himself, starting to feel the cold of the wet bathing suit clinging to him. “There’s a hierarchy and I don’t know why you don’t know that or why you keep playing  _ stupid _ about it. Love! Love!” he yells hand above his head high, “is here, is the apex, the everything  _ You _ are m-my Absolute Everything and that’s what you said when I asked you why why I had to stuff that  _ thing _ in my mouth ‘Because you love me’-”

“God Jack, I wasn’t…” Eyes wide, looking at him and Julian’s eyes are so beautiful he doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep breathing if Julian keeps looking at him so he turns away hands through his wet hair, throat tighter tighter because this is so hard and he  _ hates _ it and he thinks he hears Julian saying it’s a joke but he doesn’t understand why someone would ever joke about something so Serious.

 

“S-so why did you throw Sarina out hmhm? Why’d you bring out the dead? Send in the clowns? I’ll tell you why, Because she wasn’t good enough, because she couldn’t cut it! Because she didn’t love you and wouldn’t listen and wasn’t compliant!”

“Is  _ that _ what you think happened? Is that what the both of you think happened? Do you really think I’m that much of a monster?” Soft, quiet, Jack isn’t finished, isn’t going to listen to the soft stricken voice, isn’t going to be tricked into Failing again. 

“I am  _ not _ defective! I am  _ not _ unWorthy! I’m not Jack- I’m Jason, yoke the fire breathing oxen, plow the fields with them, sow the dragon’s teeth, slay the warriors who sprout from the seeds, slay the Nemean lion”

“That’s Hercules,” Julian says so close to his ear that he turns and feels Julian’s arms around him tightly, Julian’s face wet to his neck and Jack doesn’t understand why Julian’s voice is as unsteady as it is. “That’s Hercules and I’m so sorry.”

 

“Shut up, I kn-knew that,” or why his is either as he grips those arms tightly and closes his eyes feeling an embarrassing hitch in his throat because maybe… maybe he had a Wrong thought from the start and maybe he should have asked at the risk of ridicule but it was so  _ hard _ and he was afraid it was too late and-

“I love you-” Julian begins slowly, carefully, as if he’s spent countless hours meditating on the question.  _ Why? Why?!  _ “Because you’re you,” he finishes simply, quietly, a press of his lips to the side of Jack’s face. 

“That’s it?” Jack asks equally small, after a moment’s thought.

“That’s it. I love you.”

 

Jack tries to say it back, (he always tries) tries those words, but once more they stick and he remembers Miles of all things telling him that he once dated a girl who said that to him and all he could think to say was “ditto” and Jack knows that didn’t end well for Miles but those two syllables are so much easier to grit out so he… says them anyway as he reaches up to Julian’s face and make those four small presses with his fingers.

 

“Ditto,” he whispers, feeling a small smile spread beneath them.

 


	37. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian gives Jack a birthday present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack doesn't have a canon birthday so I usually use the actor Tim Ransom's April 19th.

It’s been fifteen years, five months, two days, and twenty one hours since Jack has last seen snow. The counter for snowfall in his mind is the  White Witch in a snowglobe, each delicate flake dropping another hour ticking up - Jack counts the time in snowfall in hours, not minutes or seconds because it isn’t Necessary to track it so closely. The counter resets when the doors from the holosuite open and he doesn’t know why Julian had insisted that he stay in his usual clothes because it’s  _ cold _ and the moment the scene changes and his shoes crunch on the hard packed ground he feels the chill right down to his bones, the bitter chill, the endless incipient cold that-

“I didn’t want to ruin the surprise,” he hears Julian say right as a heavy winter coat is draped over his shaking shoulders. Jack turns and sees Julian standing there in a matching wool coat, long, black, as the snow falls down around them and he… must have been standing there staring longer than he realized lost in his own thoughts. It isn’t Brooklyn. It isn’t Manhattan and the trees aren’t quite right to be anywhere in Earth’s New York that he remembers from his childhood but the snow still feels the same on his face and he takes a few steps, buttoning the coat with trembling fingers, waving away the gloves because the little drops on his fingers falling and melting are so… so…

“This is the English countryside,” Julian says from further and further behind him as Jack looks up into the midnight sky at the beautiful pale luminescent atmosphere reflecting the ground and spins around and around his arms out at his sides until he’s beyond dizzy, eyes shut a moment, a stagger, his face sensitive from the cold so…  _ unpleasant _ but so familiar that he… he can tune it out just a moment because it’s snow and the counter is Reset and the White Witch is standing up straight regal, proud, a small smile on her lips so vivid he can almost see her in the distance of the trees on her sled with a handful of Turkish Delight and the only sounds are his own feet, his own breaths, Julian’s breaths and... Julian’s heart beating faster?

Jack stops, the world spinning, Julian spinning beautifully, standing still, gloves, hat, hands in his pockets smiling at him just as bright as the sky and he blinks to steady his vision until Julian appears as still as the rest of the world.

“I remembered this from my Aunt’s house. It used to look like this so I thought it isn’t home but you might like it anyway. I don’t understand how you can like snow so much when you’re always cold.” It gives Jack pause, searching, always searching for some censure, some criticism, but Julian is just… wearing that “I love you” look which makes Jack warmer than ten sweaters and he looks out beyond Julian to those snow covered Junipers teeth starting to chatter just a bit but from cold and not nerves and that’s a Good chattering.

“The cold earth slept below, above the cold sky shone,” He quotes while Julian murmurs “Shelley” like he always does. “It’s quiet,” he whispers, knowing that no matter how low Julian will always hear him. “I… I like the winter,” he says speaking deliberately, the chatter of cold offsetting the chatter of nerves just this once, steady, calm, Jack’s calm not the waves of the sea but the still death of winter. He can think in the winter and he can  _ breathe _ in the winter and… and this must have cost Julian a lot (cost a lot in the middle of a bitter war and he doesn’t know if he’s Worthy of that but-) he realizes as he takes another few steps, the crunch beneath his feet one of the few sounds, the dark night snow bright different than sun bright. It doesn’t hurt his eyes.

He hears a rustle and pauses, doesn’t turn, because he trusts that no matter what sounds he hears that when Julian is there it’s Safe so he doesn’t need to-

“Do you also like this?” he hears and turns just to see the dark red gems dusted in white powder and he thinks he swallows or doesn’t breathe for a moment because… because there’s no counter for Turkish Delight because… because he never thought he’d… not in his life he didn’t think… didn’t think that he would ever again… “Jack?” Is he staring? Is he fixating? Is he doing something Wrong? He blinks again, a stop of time, a flash forward bon those nanoseconds and it isn’t often that Julian shows off his abilities but there’s his hand hovering in front of Jack’s face fingers dusted in powder holding a piece out.

“Open your mouth.”

“You… you know I’m going to-”

“I know. Happy Birthday.”

 


	38. Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian pops the question

“You want to marry me,” Jack says flatly, staring down at Julian on one knee and he’s very thankful that Julian decided to do this in private because the thought of a thousand watchful eyes blink blinking out around them, a cacophony of crickets, of cicadas sawing away at his head while he looks down and tries to Process exactly the what and why and he hopes this isn’t one of those “Because you love me” things because he’s grown to dislike those immensely and doesn’t understand the humor or the joke though Julian has apologized counting ninety seven times since which is itself Irritating because Jack was the one who didn’t Understand and didn’t Understand Correctly and-

 

“I’ll take that as a no,” Julian says with a sigh, sitting back down and Jack is already hopped up on the chair on his feet squatted, perched, wishing he could be higher because this is close and claustrophobic and he keeps staring at the flickering candle distracted.

“Of course it’s a no. You’re not not marching off to war. You’re not dying. You’re not angling for intercourse so so I don’t know why you’d ask hmhm. It’s an unnecessary contract. I don’t have assets you  _ you _ don’t have assets. I don’t have a name and I don’t want yours so I I don’t know why you’d even ask unless this is… another... joke?” Jack hops off the chair. “If it’s a joke it’s not not a funny one.”

 

“It’s not a joke, Jack! I love you, god is it so unfathomable to think that I might like to marry you because I love you?!” Well that’s a stupid question, as Patrick would say because he isn’t sure why some sort of ceremony would cement a definite of his affection for Julian and vice versa and old Swampy, Old George and Martha absolutely despised each other (Jack’s little counter, the little ceramic figure of the owl and the pussycat dancing around in his head married forty one years three months and seven days by his count still alive, till miserable, still gnawing at each other’s bones) so love or affection, tolerance, none of that was criteria for a Pointless contract. But then-

 

“You… wouldn’t love me if we weren’t married?” Jack asks thinking that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but there are times when Julian says things that make no sense to him so he asks confused (just a little anxious as he starts pacing and tries to push it aside), a tilt of his head as Julian looks about to yell one of those Things that Jack doesn’t like (like he’s crazy or irrational or he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him- nothing, nothing is wrong with hmi! They both established quite clearly) but instead stops himself.

“Of course I’d still love you if I didn’t marry me. Alright how about I… I want to spend the rest of my life with you?”

Jack is biting his finger harder now.

“You’ll leave if I don’t marry you? Where would you even go hm? We’re in the middle of a war. Ah right right, wartime marriage, marching off to war, I knew that! I just forgot!” He says declaratively, turning and pacing now trying to decide since he understands the criteria. “Right of course.”

“No, no Jack I…” Julian stops in front of him, hands on his shoulders the stop and listen Jack gesture so Jack stops and listens, though he can still feel the vibration of his leg as he stays still, staring at Julian’s prominent Adam’s apple. “It’s just a sort of… extra commitment, that’s all. But really. Forget that I asked.” Dropping voice, soft, Disappointed which isn’t what he wants but he doesn’t… want to be married either.

 

No. No, not that it’s just… aren’t they already? Isn’t Jack already Certain that Julian isn’t leaving? Doesn’t Julian know that he’s here, doesn’t he know that… that  _ Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour; no, even as the trees that whisper round a temple become soon  _

_ dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, the passion poesy, glories infinite…  _ Why wouldn’t he think that they’re already as committed as dear as close as fast holding as any two people could be when Julian told him that he didn’t have to leave… that he could stay, that Julian was his home? That… didn’t mean the same to him? There was some missing thing that Jack wasn’t Understanding? 

 

He blinks and blinks and watches Julian’s face, that sticky stuck feeling holding his tongue worse than normal as Julian does that about to be sick smile and sits back down and says with a self deprecating laugh that he hopes he hasn’t ruined their dessert. 

“Why would that ruin dessert? Did you try to cook and leave something cooking? Did you forget about it? You look like someone died I…” deep breath, deep breath, sit back down, reach out a hand, hand over hand, that’s what one does, one makes that overture, one makes eye contact even if it makes them uneasy and one says softly with a look of empathy (at least he’s felt his face enough times practicing the expression that he’s sure that’s what it’s supposed to feel like just the way Sarina had suggested) “tell me what’s wrong?”

 

Four words. Four counts, four things like a spell of truth as Julian holds his hand no matter how much it starts to shake, keeps holding it as Jack’s leg jitters and he grows restless and lays his head on the table just staring at those knuckles counting every little line that he can see as Julian talks, as Julian tells him what he’d always dreamed, always envisioned for himself, Julian very fond of the sound of his own voice which is fine by Jack as he closes his eyes and listens, trying to sort the words where they should rightly go to make him Understand the things they all say that he should. 

 

He’s glad that Julian has learned that even when he lays his head down and closes his eyes he’s listening and  _ not  _ ignoring. He listens better then actually, and Julian’s voice is nice when it’s soft like this even if it’s sad and Jack kisses his hand hoping that his own hands and lips can say the things he can’t slip past his throat without someone else’s words. And he asks Julian when he’s finished, when they’ve both migrated to the floor if Julian thinks that just wearing the ring will be enough because Jack likes the way it looks on his finger and that to him it looks like Julian’s name etched on his skin, a new Counter in his head, a gold smiling Julian sitting on the ground of an endless field of green counting billions of blades of grass for every second…

 

Every second that Jack declares from that moment are they’re as married as they’re ever going to get.

And Julian whispers quietly “It is and I do.”


	39. Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end

“How high can you climb?” Julian asks that question as Jack goes up up, looking up, never looking back, never having seen a tree so high until Julian showed him the ancient forest of Bajor with the massive trees and branches. Not the real one, the holoprogram, but that doesn’t matter to his muscles and he thinks that there really  _ is _ nothing better than trees, a tree that may in summer wear a nest of robins in her hair (or a nest of Jack sparrows like Marla used to call him) and Jack doesn’t look back but only lets go long enough to give a twirl of his finger meaning “forever” because Julian told him that if he didn’t want to, he never needed to say another word.

 

Talking will never be pleasant but it’s habit so-

 

“Think we might stop for me to take a breather?” Julian calls again and Jack is about to ask him why he would ask such a thing because Julian is Julian like Jack is Jack and if Julian can’t keep up then no one can but Julian  _ can _ keep up and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise or make some Pointless rouse instead of just saying so but… but that’s one of those odd things he calls “playful” which is almost like some Magic Trick to Jack where a card comes from behind his ear or a coin except those tricks tend not to fool his eyes but… Stop. Stop. 

 

He can stop. He weighs, does he want to stop? No. Does Julian want him to stop? Yes. But… but there the but, the important but that the decision is his without guilt, without fear of reprisal, not  _ just _ because he… he loves Julian not for that sole reason but knowing now that Julian knows not to ask such things Pointlessly- he asks for a Reason.

 

So Jack stops and straddles a branch, legs swinging looking over curious. He holds out a hand rather than asking and Julian shakes his head as he takes a seat next to him.

“I’m fine I just… wanted to enjoy the view with you a moment. Not that I’m not enjoying the exercise though honestly I’m rather afraid to look down-” Jack snorts and laughs softly at that. “-but this is nice like this.” He sees Julian wave down to Molly along with Keiko both watching them through the binoculars and he makes a stilted wave as well.

 

“They think we’re racing, you know. But I don’t even know if the trees really have a top here. You know my Aunt’s house used to have beautiful trees that I’d always look at and want to climb but…”

“But?” Jack asks with a bite of his finger, no longer so fixated on trying to curb that habit. It relaxes him. He likes it and maybe he likes the mouth feel of his fingers and the feel of his teeth biting into skin.

“But I was afraid to… to go too high.”

 

There’s a pause to that, Jack looking at him, moving his finger, a deep sigh because they both have the Same thought and Jack doesn’t know how he knows when their thoughts are the same, but he does, and he knows they’re both thinking that Jack has never been afraid to go too high. 

“You’re like Icarus you know always going higher and higher and it’s not that I can’t keep up with you but-”

“I’ll bring you with me hm. Like a pocketwatch the old owl had always with him tick tick the time, the bells, if I climb to the heavens, if the tower reaches there if we all forget language I’ll keep going with you with me on and on-” his hand again that loop of forever, hand picking up where his mouth leaves off.

 

“How am I supposed to catch you if I’m up here with you then?” Julian is sitting facing him forehead - massive lovely thing that it is - against the side of Jack’s face as he looks up at the sun setting and that feels nice and Jack thinks there are so many things that he wants to say, that he wants to say Julian is the ocean locked to the moon in the sky always there, always watching, that he’s the entire ocean in a precious drop but he… doesn’t want to use someone else’s words and his jaw aches, sticks stuck like it’s wont to do so he just… just exhales and takes Julian’s hand to the side of his face as he stares out, a playful poke to his cheek until he bites the tip of that finger - never hard- speaking softly around it.

 

_ “Pourtant, aujourd'hui, je crois avoir fini la relation de mon enfer. C'était bien l'enfer ; l'ancien...” _

“Rimbaud,” Julian whispers back. He clears his throat, like he’s not sure that he’s saying the lines correctly which is ridiculous because Jack knows that Julian’s memory is just as good as his but… Julian is less certain than he is. “I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat and dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

 

A pause there, before Jack fills in where Julian left off.

“Robert Frost.”

 

*And yet, today, I think I have finished this account of my Hell. And it was Hell; the old one…

 


End file.
